Peekaboo across Cultures: How Mothers and Infants Play with Voices, Faces, and Expectations

A young mother catches her nine-month-old infant's gaze, smiles atl him, and brings her hands slowly up and together to cover her eyes. "Uphi? Uphi?" ("Where? Where?") she asks brightly, with high ris­ ing pitch. The baby stares transfIxed at his mother's hands, a small smile of anticipation beginning to spread on his face as the sus­ pense builds over three seconds. "Na-a-a-a-a-n hut" ("Here!") ex­ claims the mother, uncovering her eyes on the "hut" and grinning broadly at her son, who shows his pleasure with hearty laughter. The language is Xhosa, a Bantu click language, and the scene is a mud-walled hut in a rural village in the Ciskei homeland of South Africa. Worlds away in a Thkyo apartment, a Japanese mother plays out the same little drama with her twelve-month-old daughter. She covers her eyes with a cloth, then chants "Inai inai bat" as she pulls the cloth away to reveal her face to the delighted child. The words and the vocal melody of the game are different in Xhosa and Japa­ nese, but the rhythm, dynamics, and shared pleasure in the inevi­ table outcome are fundamentally similar. The peekaboo game as played by American mothers and infants has been studied from a variety of theoretical and empirical per­ spectives. Observers with a psychoanalytical bent have speculated that playing peekaboo helps the infant to master anxiety aroused when the mother disappears (e.g., Call and Marschak 1966; Klee­ man 1967). Experimental psychologists have manipulated the de­ gree of response uncertainty and contingency within the peekaboo