ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development of early communication skills from birth to the emergence of the first spoken words by the child. The skills described are not just basic to early communication but are fundamental to the development of language, cognition and social interaction. There are many factors that might affect the development of a child’s early communication skills. These include: a sensory impairment, environmental influences, and biomedical conditions. The ability to jointly attend to a common referent is a necessary prerequisite to communication and language development. Co-actions are activities that the child and adult engage in simultaneously. Co-vocalisations take place and tend to predominate during times of high excitement and emotion while alternate exchanges occur at mid-levels of arousal. Gestures or movements of the head, hands or other body parts are visual actions that express meaning nonverbally and form an important part of social interaction and communication.
