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Contextual Variability in Interactions Between Mothers and 2-year-olds Tiia Tulviste First Language 2003; 23; 311 DOI: 10.1177/01427237030233004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://fla.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/3/311

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Contextual variability in interactions between mothers and 2-year-olds* TIIA TULVISTE,

University of Tartu, Estonia

ABSTRACT

This study compares the interactions of Estonian mothers and their 2-year-old children across three interaction contexts. At meals, mothers and children were the least talkative, and mothers used the least conversation-eliciting utterances. During bookreading and puzzle-solving situations, mothers were significantly more concerned with eliciting talk from children and directing their attention. A comparison of the current data with data collected in 1992 (Tulviste & Raudsepp 1997) demonstrated that the pattern of Estonian mothers’ speech had not changed at meals, whereas maternal speech during puzzle solving was not as highly directive as it was in 1992. The results may reflect the considerable economic and societal changes that have taken place in Estonia during the last decade. KEYWORDS

Early socialization; maternal education; maternal speech; motherchild interaction; toddlers’ language The study addressed the question whether Estonian mothers’ and 2year-olds’ speech varied across different interaction contexts in respect of the amount of talk and maternal regulatory language directed towards children. Further, the study was interested in comparison of the current data with an earlier set, gathered in 1992 (Tulviste & Raudsepp, 1997), with the aim of examining how general was the previous finding that Estonian middle-class mothers are more interested in controlling children’s behaviour than in eliciting their conversational participation.

*

Research for this article was supported by a grant from the Estonian Science Foundation (No. 4629). I thank Luule Mizera for helping me, and all participating families. Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78-336, 50410 Tartu, Estonia. E-mail: [email protected]

First Language Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications [0142-7237 (200310) 23(3): 311–325; 036657]

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Previous within-culture research on mother-child interaction differentiates between mothers who are more concerned with controlling and directing their children’s behaviour and those who are more concerned with eliciting the conversational participation of the children (Halle & Shatz 1994, Hoff-Ginsberg 1991, McDonald & Pien 1982). Similarly, Snow, DeBlauw & van Roosmalen (1979) differentiated between ‘speech for fun’ during mothers’ leisure time, and ‘business-oriented speech’ occurring when mothers were engaged in certain tasks. The existing evidence also indicates variability in maternal and children’s speech across cultures. Although there appears to be no study that directly compares how English-speaking mothers living in different countries interact with their children, one can deduce that British mothers seem to use more direct regulatory language (Halle & Shatz 1994) than American mothers do (Bellinger 1979). The same holds true for Estonian mothers in comparison with mothers from Finland, Latvia, Sweden and the USA. Namely, in a previous comparative study (Junefelt & Tulviste 1997) the Estonian mothers of 2-year-olds directed the children’s attention and behaviour significantly more frequently, but elicited their conversational participation significantly less frequently, than mothers from Sweden and the USA. Similarly, a comparative study of mothers’ interaction with early adolescents in Estonian, Finnish and Swedish mono- and bicultural families (unpublished data) revealed that Estonian monolingual maternal regulatory speech differed from others, including Estonian mothers living in Sweden (Tulviste & Kants 2001), in the high frequency of using behavioural directives, and a preference for imperatives. In addition, Tulviste (2000) found mothers in Estonia using behavioural directives significantly more frequently than mothers with a Euro-American background in the USA. On the other hand, Estonian mothers, toddlers and teenagers were less talkative than others. The Estonian middle-class mothers’ tendency to control children’s behaviour and to be less interested in children’s verbalization challenged the view that controlling maternal style is something typical of the working class and that conversation-eliciting maternal style is – in contrast – a characteristically middle-class phenomenon (cf. Heath 1983, Hoff-Ginsberg 1991, Schieffelin & Ochs 1986). The question of maternal conversational styles has been attracting much attention because the directive style has been found to have negative consequences for the rate-dependent differences in children’s language, such as vocabulary size. Moreover, it is reported that highly directive mothers have children with lower school grades, achievement test scores, IQ scores and achievement motivation (see Beyer 1995). The only positive consequence for language development Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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seems to be a positive relationship between maternal directiveness (the provision of verb models) and the proportion of verbs in children’s early vocabularies (Tomasello & Kruger 1992). At the same time, children whose mothers talk more with them are found to be likely to have more developed language skills (Barnes, Gutfreund, Satterly & Wells 1983, Hart & Risley 1992, Huttenlocher et al. 1991, Pine 1994). A direct style of conversation in Estonian mothers may be determined in part by some characteristics of the Estonian language. Estonian belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages (it is an agglutinating language with 14 cases, lacking grammatical future and grammatical gender, etc.). However, this cannot account for the finding that, although Estonian adolescents and their mothers living in Estonia and in Sweden have been found to be not more talkative than Finns living in Finland and Sweden, the directiveness of Estonian mothers in Estonia has also been shown to differ from that of Estonians living in Sweden (Tulviste & Kants 2001). It appears likely that some other sociocultural factors play a role. In particular, a dominant macro-contextual factor bearing on life in Estonia until recently was the fact that, after World War II, there were five decades of Soviet occupation. Data for the earlier study of 2-year-olds were collected in 1992, a year after Estonia regained its independence. It is possible that the mothers’ own Soviet upbringing, with its stress on conforming and adjusting to the communist system and uniform socialization ideology, impacted upon how they were socializing their children. Thus, our interest in investigating the pattern of the maternal speech addressed by Estonian mothers towards their children was prompted also by the rapid societal changes that have taken place in Estonia during the last decade. It was demonstrated in a longitudinal study by Lauristin & Vihalemm (1997) that Estonian value priorities had undergone a noticeable change from 1991 to 1995. In general, values and attitudes have been found to be more stable than real-life behaviour (Holden & Miller 1999). Hence, if Estonian values have changed, it seems to be reasonable to expect that there have been big changes also in people’s behaviour. For these reasons, it is of great interest to determine whether the decade of exposure to the Western values and norms has brought about a noticeable shift in socialization patterns into more democratic ones, and changed – among other things – the pattern of Estonian mothers’ speech directed towards their children. With this aim, the regulatory language used by mothers of 2year-old children at meals and during puzzle solving was compared with the speech of the mothers at meals and during puzzle solving in the videorecordings made in 1992. Thus, the first hypothesis of the current study was that, reflecting the broader sociocultural changes, Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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less direct regulatory language would be directed towards 2-year-olds by Estonian mothers than was found in 1992. Interestingly, the finding of our preliminary comparative study of the interaction of mothers and 2-year-olds in Estonia, Sweden and the USA documented that the occurrence and magnitude of cultural differences in ways of speaking may depend largely on the particular interaction context. Although the Estonian mothers were significantly more directive than mothers from Sweden and the USA also at meals, they appeared to be extremely directive in the puzzle-solving context (Junefelt & Tulviste 1997). It is possible that in certain interaction contexts Estonian mothers would not be so directive, or that they would be even less directive than mothers from other countries. Therefore, the present study tested interaction context effects for interactions of Estonian mothers and 2-year-olds, comparing not only mealtime and puzzle-solving but also book-reading contexts. Several studies have reported a variability of mother-child interaction across contexts. All interaction contexts investigated in the current study – meals (for a review, see Aukrust & Snow 1998), puzzle solving and book reading (for a review, see Moerk 1985, Scarborough & Dobrich 1994) – have been frequently investigated contexts. For example, Snow et al. (1976) compared parents’ speech in book reading and play, and Hoff-Ginsberg (1991) at meal, book-reading, play and dressing settings. Both studies found book reading to be different from other contexts because parents were more talkative, had bigger lexical and syntactical diversity and produced a lower frequency of regulatory speech (for more data on situational effects, see Hoff-Ginsberg 1991). Sorsby & Martlew (1991) suggested that in highly routine situations mother and child are able to engage in more complex linguistic behaviour. Rogoff, Ellis & Gardner (1984) found that in home-based tasks children receive less instruction (including directives) than in school-based tasks. Research on the benefits of joint book reading has revealed that the frequency of book reading and the type of interaction occurring during book reading can predict children’s vocabulary size some years later (see Sénéchal, Cornell & Broda 1995). Book familiarity has also been found to influence reading interactions. Snow & Goldfield (1983) demonstrated the use of routines during familiar book reading (the same lexical items and linguistic constructions used by parents). Two-year-olds were reported to talk more if the books were familiar, but their mothers talked more in the presence of unfamiliar books (Goodsitt, Raitan & Perlmutter 1988). However, the main goal of the present study is to examine situational differences in the speech of 2-year-old children and their Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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mothers. Of particular interest here is how talkative mothers and toddlers actually are during different situational contexts, measured by the average number of words per minute, and the syntactical complexity of language used (as measured by mean length of utterance in words, MLU). Other conversational parameters, including mother’s conversational dominance over the target child, were also recorded. Previous researchers have reported that these maternal variables negatively influence children’s linguistic and communicative abilities (Barnes et al. 1983, Huttenlocher et al. 1991, Pine 1994, Yoder & Kaiser 1989). A maternal speech measure was also the regulatory speech used towards children, differentiating attentional directives from behavioural directives and from conversation-eliciting utterances. Based on the fact that solving a puzzle and reading a book presupposes more cognitive effort from the child than eating a meal, children were expected to use syntactically more complex language (as measured by MLU) at meals than during the two other interaction contexts. Based on the results of previous studies, it was expected that both children and mothers would be most talkative during book reading. As to maternal regulatory language, the hypothesis was that mothers would direct more attentional and behavioural directives towards children during puzzle solving, and less at meals. It was also hypothesized that most conversation-eliciting utterances would be used during book reading. The variability in children’s and mothers’ speech may depend on the gender of the child. Some previous research has found girls outperforming boys in speech production, for example, speaking in longer utterances (Bornstein et al. 2000) and having bigger vocabulary size (Huttenlocher et al. 1991). Therefore, the current study predicted that girls would produce more speech, that their speech would be syntactically more complex (as measured by their MLU) and that mothers would be more talkative with daughters than with sons (see also Leaper, Anderson & Sanders 1998). As for the maternal regulatory speech, Cherry & Lewis (1976) found that mothers of 2-year-old boys used more directives in their speech, but talked less and produced a lower proportion of questions than did mothers of girls. Gleason et al. (1996) reported that mothers of boys used two times more prohibitives than mothers of girls. Based on these findings and on the fact that boys may evoke more behavioural control than girls, it was hypothesized that mothers of boys would use more attentional and behavioural directives, while more conversation-eliciting utterances should occur in the talk of girls’ mothers. Thus, three hypotheses are tested. First, the mothers of the present Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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study were expected to talk more, to elicit more conversational participation from their 2-year-olds, and to be less directive and controlling than was found in data gathered in 1992. Second, during book reading mothers were predicted to talk more and control less than at meals and during puzzle solving. Third, girls were expected to talk more and to receive more conversation-eliciting utterances than boys. Mothers of boys, in turn, were expected to be more concerned with directing their sons’ attention and behaviour. METHOD

Participants Thirty Estonian mothers (M = 28.40 years, SD = 3.69 years) and their 2year-old (M = 23.63 months, SD = 1.61 months) children participated in the study. There were 13 boys and 17 girls. Thirteen mothers had completed high-school education, and 17 had graduated at university. The families were monolingual and their native language was Estonian. The maternal regulatory speech was compared with the data collected in 1992. The children in that study were all Estonians, ranged in age from 23 to 27 months (M = 25), with the average mean length of utterance in words (MLU) at meals 1.79 (SD = 0.46) and during puzzle solving 1.63 (SD = 0.40). There were equal numbers of boys and girls. The mothers had at least college education. All families were monolingual. Procedure Mother-child dyads were videotaped at children’s homes in three interaction contexts: at meals, during puzzle solving and during book reading. One-third of the children performed the puzzle-solving task first, the other third started with eating, and the last third with book reading. A jigsaw puzzle of an animal farm was used in the puzzle task. None of the children had seen this puzzle before. The puzzle was the same as in a previous study (Junefelt & Tulviste 1997). The picture book used in the study had little text, and was unfamiliar to the participating mothers and children. The participants were told to behave as they ‘normally’ would, and they were encouraged to ignore the fact that they were being recorded. The researcher interacted minimally with the participants after the videotaping had started. All videorecordings were made when only the child and the mother were at home. The mothers were not eating with their children. The whole mealtime was recorded (M = 9 min. 14 s, SD = 2 min. 39 s). The puzzle solving was recorded until all items were Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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placed into their location. The mother was instructed to help the child when needed. The mean duration of the puzzle solving was 10 min. 8 s (SD = 2 min. 53 s). The mean duration of the joint book reading was 10 min. 43 s (SD = 2 min. 27 s). Measures The amount of speech All video recordings were transcribed using the CHAT transcription system (MacWhinney 1991) to calculate the amount of speech. In the analyses the following variables were used: 1. talkativeness: the average number of words per minute; 2. MLU: the mean number of words in the mothers’ and children’s utterances; 3. mother conversational dominance: the average number of maternal utterances per child’s utterances in the same time period. Type of regulatory speech The category system used in this study is based on the systems developed by McDonald & Pien (1982) and Pine (1994). It differentiates between the utterances intended to control physical behaviour, those intended to direct attention, and those intended to converse with the conversational partner. Thus, utterances were coded according to their communicative intention into following categories: 1. Behavioural directives: utterances that involve giving commands or permission, requesting or encouraging desirable action, or preventing the conversational partner from acting were identified in each of the transcripts and coded, as in lines 1, 3, 4 and 6 in the following example. *MOT: söö ilusti! (eat nicely!) *CHI: see on vesi (this is water). *MOT: ära pane näppu sinna sisse! (do not put your finger in it!) *MOT: söö ilusti! (eat nicely!) *CHI: hammustan leiba ([I] bite the bread). *MOT: söö söö! (eat eat!) 2. Attentional directives: utterances used to attract, direct, or redirect attention, as in lines 2 and 6 in the following example. *MOT: oi kes nüüd siin on? (oh who is it now in here?) *MOT: vaata! (look!) *CHI: kutsu (doggy). *MOT: see on kes? (it is who?) Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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kiisu (kitty). kuule kuule! (listen listen) kes need teised on? (who are the others?) kiisu kiisu kutsu (kitty kitty doggy).

3. Conversation-eliciting utterances: utterances that attempt to elicit a verbal response from the conversational partner, as in lines 1, 4, and 7 in the previous example. The sentence form of regulatory utterances was coded as either imperative (‘Eat salad!’), declarative (‘You have a nice moustache [from milk].’) or question (‘What’s the hurry?’). In the current study, we are interested mainly in the frequency of using imperatives across interaction contexts, because in the preliminary research, the Estonian mothers’ high directiveness reflected also on their frequent use of imperatives in regulating their children. Directives were identified and coded by two independent judges with more than 94% agreement in all protocols. Disagreements were resolved through discussion. RESULTS

Descriptive data on child’s and mother’s talkativeness (as measured by words per minute), child’s and mother’s MLU, mother’s conversational dominance (as measured by the average number of maternal utterances per child’s utterances in the same time period), and on maternal regulatory speech during three interaction contexts are presented in Table 1. There were large individual differences in all speech variables and in the duration of meals. Proportional, instead of absolute, frequency measures were used to attain measures of conversational style without the influence of the amount of talk and duration of meals. Thus, all regulatory speech variables were calculated in terms of frequencies per minute. To estimate differences between the means of different types of speech variables, post-hoc comparisons with the LSD test were performed. The results of the LSD tests showing whether there were significant contextual differences among these speech variables are given in Table 1. Contextual influence on maternal speech As shown in the Table 1, both mothers and children were significantly less talkative (as measured by the average of words per minute) at Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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TABLE 1. Means and standard deviations of speech variables during mealtime, puzzle solving and book reading, and the results of ANOVAs for speech variables in the 3 interaction contexts

Mealtime

Puzzle solving

Book reading

F (2,87)

1.79 (0.46) 2,3 8.73 (8.12)

1.63 (0.40) 1 14.73 (8.95)

1.61 (0.34) 1 13.25 (11.41)

1.79 3.18*

3.97 (0.64) 2,3 46.82 (33.10) 0.44 (0.27) 2,3 0.42 (0.47) 3 2.32 (1.18) 2,3 2.19 (2.32)

3.72 (2.65) 1 86.27 (33.06) 0.55 (0.30) 1 1.50 (1.23) 3 2.62 (1.63) 1 5.96 (2.50)

4.11 (0.68) 1 74.84 (30.06) 0.46 (0.17) 1 1.39 (0.76) 1,2 1.00 (1.65) 1 6.34 (4.79)

1.17 7.52** 1.80 13.72*** 9.87** 13.74***

Child MLU Words per minute Mother MLU Words per minute Dominance Attentional directives Behavioural directives Conversation-eliciting utterances

Note. MLU = mean length of utterance in words. Superscripts show significant differences among interaction contexts according to the LSD test, * at p < 0.05, ** at p < 0.001, *** at p < 0.0001; the contexts are marked as follows: 1 = Mealtime, 2 = Puzzle solving, 3 = Book reading.

meals than during puzzle solving and book reading. There were no contextual differences in mothers’ and children’s MLU and dominance over the target child (p > 0.05). There were significant differences between the contexts in respect of maternal regulatory speech (see Table 1). A 2 (Mother’s education: with vs. without university degree) × 2 (Gender: boys vs. girls) × 2 (Interaction context: mealtime vs. puzzle solving) MANOVA revealed that the types of regulatory utterances (i.e., attentional directives vs. behavioural directives vs. conversationeliciting utterances per minute) varied significantly as a function of Interaction context (Wilks’ lambda (3,76) = 0.49, p < 0.0001), but no effect of Gender (boys vs. girls) and Mother’s education. At meals, mothers used attentional directives significantly less frequently than during puzzle solving and during book reading. Behavioural directives were significantly less frequently used during book reading than at meals and during puzzle solving. At meals, mothers used conversationeliciting utterances significantly less frequently than during puzzle solving and book reading. A one-way ANOVA revealed that there was Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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an effect of Interaction context (mealtime vs. puzzle solving vs. book reading) on no. mothers’ imperatives per minute (F (2,87)= 2.06, p < 0.0001), due to the fact that during book reading imperatives were used significantly less frequently than at meals and during puzzle solving (M = 0.92, 2.52, 3.17, respectively). Gender influence on the amount of speech and maternal regulatory speech One-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were used to ascertain whether the amount and type of speech variables varied as a function of Gender (boys vs. girls). No effect of Gender on children’ speech variables was found, or on the ways in which mothers talk to their sons as opposed to their daughters (ps > 0.05). Educational influence on maternal speech One-way ANOVAs revealed an effect of Mother’s education (with vs. without university degree) on maternal conversational dominance, F (1,88) = 3.98, p < 0.05. Mothers with high-school education produced, in the same time period, significantly more utterances over child’s utterances (M = 0.54, SD = 0.28) than did mothers with university degrees (M = 0.44, SD = 0.23). One-way ANOVAs revealed no significant effect of mother’s education on mothers’ MLU, words per minute or maternal use of regulatory language. Comparison of maternal regulatory speech with the results of the previous study A 2 (Year of investigation: 1992 vs. 2000) × 2 (Gender: boys vs. girls) × 2 (Interaction context: mealtime vs. puzzle solving) MANOVA revealed that the types of regulatory utterances (i.e., attentional directives vs. behavioural directives vs. conversation-eliciting utterances per minute) varied significantly as a function of Year of investigation (Wilks’ lambda (3,70) = 0.51, p < 0.0001), and of Interaction context (Wilks’ lambda (3,70) = 0.42, p < 0.0001), but no effect of Gender. There was a significant Year of investigation × Interaction context interaction (Wilks’ lambda (3,70) = 0.57, p < 0.0001). One-way ANOVAs revealed that there was no effect of Year of investigation (1992 vs. 2000) on the regulatory language used by Estonian mothers towards their 2-year-olds during mealtime (p > 0.05). The same was shown by ANOVA for imperatives per minute used by mothers at meals. On the other hand, there were marked differences in maternal regulatory language used during puzzle solving. ANOVA for maternal Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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attentional directives per minute revealed a significant effect of Year of investigation (F (1,38) = 20.27, p < 0.0001), due to the fact that mothers in the preliminary study used this type of directive significantly more frequently (M = 3.59, SD = 1.40). Similarly, an ANOVA for behavioural directives per minute revealed a significant effect of Year of investigation (F (1,38) = 52.15, p < 0.00001). In the 1992 study, mothers used behavioural directives significantly more frequently (M = 7.92, SD = 2.92). An ANOVA for conversation-eliciting utterances per minute revealed a significant effect of Year of investigation (F (1,38) = 29.99), p < 0.0001, due to the fact that in 1992 mothers used this type of utterances significantly less frequently (M = 1.52, SD = 0.87) than in the current study (M = 5.96, SD = 2.49). In addition, a one-way ANOVA for imperatives per minute used by mothers during puzzle solving revealed a significant effect of Year of investigation (F (1,38) = 35.52, p < 0.0001), due to the fact that in 1992 mothers used imperatives significantly more frequently (M = 8.29, SD = 3.18) than in this study (M = 3.17, SD = 2.03). DISCUSSION

The current study found that the ways in which children and mothers use the language depend largely upon interactive contexts. Both children and their mothers were the least talkative at meals, and produced significantly more talk during puzzle solving and book reading. In addition, during puzzle solving and book reading, mothers were found to be significantly more concerned with eliciting talk from children than at meals. Previous research has found that the bookreading context provides good opportunities for language learning because both mothers and children are very talkative during this interaction context (Hoff-Ginsberg 1991, Snow et al. 1976). Our research demonstrated that the puzzle-solving context is comparable in respect of amount of talk involved. The finding that a lot of attentional directives were used during puzzle-solving and book-reading contexts is consistent with this notion. Using a great deal of attention directives does not mean that the mother does not take the child’s attentional focus into account. Earlier research has established that adult-child joint attentional focus on nonlinguistic entities has a positive effect on child language development (Schmidt & Lawson 2002, Tomasello & Kruger 1992). Also, previous studies have found that during book reading mothers across social classes interact in a style that has been found to be typical of middle-class mothers (Dunn, Wooding & Herman 1977, Snow et al. 1976). The current study provides evidence Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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that this holds true also for Estonian middle-class mothers whose directive style of conversation during some interaction contexts (at meals and during puzzle solving) appeared to be a unique phenomenon among middle-class mothers (see above). Namely, our results indicated that during book reading the middle-class Estonian mothers were not concerned with controlling children’s behaviour. Both mothers and children were found to be fairly consistent in their ways of talking with their 2-year-olds across contexts, in respect of MLU and maternal conversational dominance over the child. No support was found for the hypothesis that children would produce more complex talk at meals than during puzzle solving and book reading. Interestingly, maternal education was found to play an important role only in influencing maternal conversational dominance. The results revealed that the mothers who had a university degree tended to dominate conversationally over their children less than the mothers with high school education. Contrary to expectations, the study did not find significant gender differences in girls’ and boys’ speech styles or in the ways in which mothers talk to their sons vs. daughters. Also, the hypothesis that mothers of boys would use more attentional and behavioural directives, while mothers of girls prompt more children’s conversational participation, was not supported. Thus, the findings were not consistent with the view that boys and girls are spoken to differently (Cherry & Lewis 1976, Gleason et al.1996, Leaper et al. 1998). A comparison of the current data with those gathered in 1992 demonstrated no large differences in Estonian mothers’ regulatory speech during mealtimes. However, the observed pattern of the language directed by mothers towards their 2-year-olds during puzzle solving was not consistent with the 1992 data. In the previous study, mothers were extremely directive in this context: both attentional and behavioural directives were used much more frequently, while conversation-eliciting utterances were used significantly less than in the current study. Thus, the results were in the predicted direction, showing that Estonian mothers seem to have become less controlling than in 1992. These changes in maternal language directed towards their children may reflect a general shift in the socialization patterns in Estonia into more democratic ones. The latter, in turn, may be related to the major economic and societal changes that the country is undergoing and the influence of exposure to the Western culture. Obviously, there may be numerous other reasons why Estonian mothers in the previous study did not direct as much regulatory language towards their children during puzzle solving. One of the reasons may Downloaded from http://fla.sagepub.com at Tartu University Library on September 18, 2009

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be the novelty of puzzles. At the time of the earlier (1992) study, children in Estonia were not used to so many toys, and the selection of toys was somewhat different from that in Western countries. For example, a puzzle was not as common a toy for Estonian children as it was for American and Swedish children, and as it is for Estonian children nowadays. For children participating in the present study, puzzles were fairly familiar toys, but the puzzle used in the study was new to them. This may also influence the amount of maternal help children needed and how much regulatory language mothers directed towards children. Many studies have reported that maternal behaviour is most stable with school-age children and least stable with infants (see Holden & Miller 1999). It is possible that studies with older children would result in smaller contextual variability of Estonian mother-child interactions than studies with 2-year-olds. Lastly, according to Hall (1983), cultures differ in the relative role of the context (both situational and personal) in the production and interpretation of communicative meaning. Context is assumed to play a much bigger role in high-context cultures, and a much smaller role in low-context cultures. The list of highcontext cultures by Hall is somewhat similar to the list of collectivistic vs. individualistic countries (Schwartz 1994), where Estonia is listed among collectivistic countries. Thus, the contextual differences in Estonia might be bigger than in some other cultures. The results of Junefelt & Tulviste (1997) provide some support for the hypothesis, with larger contextual differences in Estonian mothers’ speech than in the speech of mothers from Sweden and the USA. The question of whether Estonia belongs to the list of highly context-sensitive cultures needs to be addressed in future research.

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