New Perspectives in Early Communicative Development

Book excerpt: Since the 1970s researchers in the communicative development of infants and small children had rejected traditional models and began to explore the complex, dynamic properties of communicative exchanges. This title, originally published in 1993, proposed a new and advanced frame of reference to account for the growing body of empirical work on the emergence of communication processes at the time. Communication development in the early years of life undergoes universal processes of change and variations linked to the characteristics and qualities of different social contexts. The first section of the book presents key issues in communication research which were either revisited (intentional communication, imitation, symbolic play) or newly introduced (co-regulation, the role of emotions, shared meaning) in recent years. The second section provides an account of communication as a context-bound process partly inspired by theoretical accounts such as those of Vygotsky and Wallon. Included here are new studies showing differences in communication between infants compared with those between infants and adults, which also have important methodological implications. With perspectives from developmental psychology, psycholinguistics and educational psychology, the international contributors give a multi-disciplinary account of the expansion, variety and richness of current research on early communication. This title will be of particular interest to those involved in child development and communication research, as well as for social, educational and clinical psychologists.