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Cross-cultural differences in mother-preschooler book sharing practices in the United States and Thailand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2020

Sirada ROCHANAVIBHATA Open the ORCID record for Sirada ROCHANAVIBHATA [Opens in a new window]  and
Viorica MARIAN
Sirada ROCHANAVIBHATA*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, USA
Viorica MARIAN
Affiliation:
Northwestern University, USA
*
Corresponding author: Sirada Rochanavibhata, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive Evanston, IL60208-3540, USA. E-mail: rochanavibhata@u.northwestern.edu
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Abstract

Cross-cultural differences in book sharing practices of American and Thai mother-preschooler dyads were examined. Twenty-one Thai monolingual and 21 American-English monolingual mothers and their four-year-olds completed a book sharing task. Results revealed narrative style differences between the American and Thai groups: American mothers adopted a high-elaborative story-builder style and used affirmations, descriptions, extensions, and recasting more than Thai mothers. Thai mothers adopted a low-elaborative story-teller style and used more attention directives and expansions than American mothers. American children produced longer narratives than their Thai peers, whereas Thai children repeated their mothers’ utterances more than their American counterparts. Maternal and child narrative styles were associated. These results suggest that maternal scaffolding styles differ across cultures and influence children's developing narrative skills.

Keywords

book sharingscaffoldingcross-cultural
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , July 2021 , pp. 834 - 857
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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