ABSTRACT
The image of shared attentiveness can help organize the review of research about communication during the first two months of life. This chapter focuses primarily on the edges of the infant circle to view newborns as expressive communicators. It discusses the infant circle from a different angle in order to describe newborns as receptive communicators. The chapter looks directly at the overlap of infant and caregiver to consider how such different partners can each contribute to the opening of a communicative channel. It examines the literature this phase’s most dominant theme—the biobehavioral preparation of human newborns for social communication. Expressiveness is the human newborn’s most central behavioral talent. The newborn’s capacity for states of arousal has profound significance for research on topics ranging from the organization of motor reflexes to the development of the central nervous system. Newborns’ behavior is organized into discernible states of arousal that serve as a frame for their first communicative experiences.
