This study investigates a particular behavior in talk-in-interaction that appears to be, at least in its most explicit form, relatively unique to children, that is, the behavior whereby one participant explicitly instructs another participant to say a specific phrase, after which the first participant then supplies a prefashioned response. Rather…

This study investigated whether European American and Japanese mothers' speech to preschoolers contained exchange- and alignment-oriented structures that reflect and possibly support culture-specific models of self-other relatedness. In each country 12 mothers were observed in free play with their 3-year-olds. Maternal speech was coded for…