ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that when mothers in the two cultures are involved in direct caretaking of their babies, the American mother does more talking to her baby than the Japanese mother while the Japanese mother does more lulling of her baby. It looks at the pace of life for the mothers and infants across the total observations to see whether a livelier or more leisurely approach to caretaking by the mothers is likely to affect their verbal behavior and whether variation in the awake-asleep cycles of infants is likely to affect the nature of their vocalization. The chapter turns to a more detailed examination of those times when the infants are awake and inquire as to how quickly, and with what type of verbal behavior, the mothers in each culture respond to various kinds of vocalization by their infants.
