Social and Communicative Development in Infancy

Abstract

(from the chapter) suggests that infant communicative action is highly context specific, showing remarkable variability to even subtle alterations of the social and physical settings in which interaction occurs / includes reviews of research on affective communication during face-to-face interactions between infants and their social partners, gestural communication in adult-infant interaction, differences in mother versus father interactive patterns with infants, and finally, research on how infants interact in group settings in the family and with peers / in reviewing current views deriving from ethological and sociocultural perspectives, we argue that infant communicative action cannot be understood as a simple readout of innate expressive movements nor as being shaped entirely by adult contingencies (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)