ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews data and theory dealing with the development of communicative skills in animals. It discusses methodological and conceptual issues that are particularly important in the developmental analysis of communication. The chapter is concerned with the probable adaptiveness of early communication and, hence, with the fitness values of such behaviors. It is likely that behavioral ontogeny is also heavily dependent upon inhibitory shaping, and that differentiation of viable behavioral phenotypes involves a complex control system in which genetic predispositions and multimodal stimulus inputs define a spectrum of possible outcomes. The chapter shows that the term communication denotes a very important psychobiological domain that contains a heterogeneous set of partially understood processes, and the single label–communication–has come to impart to these processes a false sense of unity. It argues that communicative skills have evolved because of contributions they make to fitness. The chapter suggests that all psychobiological processes have an ontogenetic dimension.
