This study compares interactions during joint book reading of 14 Taiwanese and 15 American mother-child pairs from low-income families. All mother-child pairs read the same book, 'The very hungry caterpillar', at home and their interactions were recorded. Taiwanese and American mothers demonstrated both similarities and differences during joint book reading. Taiwanese mothers talked more, gave and requested more information, but requested and received fewer evaluations from their children. These cross-cultural differences reveal that joint book reading is not just for entertainment; instead, it is a means for transmission of moral values and proper conduct as well as for the socialization of appropriate parent-child conversation styles in the Taiwanese and American families studied.

This longitudinal study examines change in maternal interaction strategies in Taiwanese mothers across time, and the synchronic and diachronic relationships between maternal interaction strategies and children's language and early literacy skills. Forty-two mother–child dyads participated in this study. Their interactions during joint book-reading were tape-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed when the children were fourteen, twenty-six, and thirty-six months of age. The children received a battery of language and early literacy tests when they were thirty-six months old. Findings showed that Taiwanese mothers adjusted their use of interaction strategies as their children grew. Maternal use of description, performance, prediction inference, and print-related talk were positively correlated with their children's language and literacy skills. Significant negative correlations were found between use of task-behavioral regulation strategy and text reading in mothers and their children's language performance. This study suggests that age-appropriate interaction strategies are important for children's language and early literacy development.

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Precision location technology is one of basic technologies to realize the farmland working machine automatic driving and prescription agriculture; it is an important content of modern intelligent agricultural machinery research. In order to study a low-cost and high-precision location system which can be applied in the small machine worked in the south paddy field, the study proposed a double laser sources location technology. With the known distance between two laser emitter, the dynamic emission angle of laser emitter can be acquired and the location coordinate of the moving machine can be accumulated. Then the real-time coordinate information and moving attitude also can be obtained. It lays a foundation for unmanned working machine and data acquisition from fixed-point in the paddy field. First, the principle of laser location was introduced in the paper, and it focused on the design of mechanical structure and controlling unit. Then, the automatic tracking and location experiment was carried when the system was fixed on the rice transplanter. And the experiment shows, the distance shifting of tracking curve is less than 7cm in the measurement of 100m, and the advantage of the high precision, low cost and high portability is very suitable for the location requirement of south farmland working machine.