Department of Psychology, University of Tartu
Initial results from the comparative research on maternal regulatory speech used toward 2-year-old children in Estonia, Sweden and the U.S. (Junefelt and Tulviste 1997) showed that Estonian mothers expected less talk from their children and tended to control their behaviour more than mothers from other countries. The present paper reports investigations aimed to find out whether Estonian mothers of older children (4 yr., 6 yr. olds, and teenagers) have a similar pattern of regulatory speech. Discussion focuses on the following questions: To what degree is the style of maternal regulatory speech determined by the peculiarities of language and/or culture; and to what degree does maternal regulatory speech style influence a child’s language development, and cognitive/social development?
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