Socialization at meals - A comparison of American and Estonian mother-adolescent interaction

The amount and types of regulatory speech and verbal comments in mother-adolescent interaction were examined to find out whether Estonians, when compared to their North American counterparts, are more concerned with the behavior of other people and less concerned with their conversational participation. The mealtime interactions between 12 Estonian and 10 American adolescents and their mothers were videotaped in the participants' homes. In both countries, mothers used regulatory speech more frequently than teenagers. Estonian mothers controlled the behavior of teenagers more frequently; they made more verbal comments and made more comments about their behavior. There were no cultural differences in eliciting talk and in comments on errors in language use. Mothers and teenagers were similar in their preferences for different types of verbal comments.