ABSTRACT
From birth, infants experience the bidirectional influences of social and cognitive processing. Ample evidence reveals our evolutionarily endowed urge to interact: Babies want to be “in touch” with other people, and this honed instinct has consequences for how they develop. Indeed, acquisition of a range of human abilities is dependent on extensive and extended early social interaction. In this chapter, we examine the early biases that contribute to the development of socio-cognitive functions, including social attention, verbal and nonverbal communication, and full-blown language. A critical component of healthy child development is regular communication with others. Thus, infants’ engagement in communication has implications for their acquisition of a range of socio-cognitive abilities. Not surprisingly, typical (and atypical) infant communication is also predictive of developmental outcomes. Thus, the goal of probing how infants communicate is to understand how they perceive and interpret the actions of others in relation to themselves, processes that have enormous implications for future developmental outcomes.
