Maternal speech to three-month-old infants in the United States and Japan

Abstract

An American-Japanese comparison of maternal speech to 3-month-old infants is presented. Mother-infant dyads were videotaped in the laboratory, and the maternal speech was analysed by function and syntactic form. US mothers were more information-oriented than were Japanese mothers; they also used more question forms, especially yes/no questions. Japanese mothers were affect-oriented, and they used more nonsense, onomatopoeic sounds, baby talk, and babies' names. The differences between countries in maternal speech addressed to 3-month-olds appear to reflect characteristic culture-specific communicative styles as well as beliefs and values related to childrearing.