ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the communicative skills children develop in early childhood. Communication scholars are also interested in representing the social knowledge that enables children to communicate appropriately. The chapter discusses social reasoning and argumentation in some detail; in these two arenas the interplay between knowledge and skill can be clearly seen. The critical aspects of social-cognitive knowledge underlying communicative competence include distinguishing self from others, increasing differentiation in the knowledge of others, and developing knowledge about relationships with others, such as authority relationships or friendships. Assessing children’s developing social knowledge about communication offers insight into how individuals begin to establish and maintain interpersonal relations with each other as well as the essential role communication plays in this process. Infants’ social understanding at the end of the first year incorporates coordinated representations of others’ activities and events and representations about their own manipulations of objects.
