Chapter 1: A Sociocultural Constructivist Approach to Metacommunication in Child Development

The relational dimension of metacommunication processes, previously investigated as part of nonverbal communication studies, has only recently been acknowledged a special role within the realms of child development. The term metacommunication, used by Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967) to refer to nonverbal, relational communication in their clinical practice, was also used by Bateson (1972) in his seminal work about how metacommunication signals are being used to construct shared frames of interaction. According to Bateson, children utilized special signals to create a context for the interpretation of each other's actions as play or aggression.

The elaboration of the construct of metacommunication has also taken place, for example, in the realms of communication science (e.g., Leeds-Hurwitz, 1989, 1995), as well as has inspired interesting investigations on family interactions (e.g., Pontecorvo & Fasulo, 1999) and child–child interactions and relationships (e.g., Stambak & Sinclair, 1993). The initial emphasis, centralized on the study of nonverbal communication, however, has been substituted by theoretical and methodological efforts to expand the analysis of metacommunication processes to encompass verbal and nonverbal expressions of relational metacommunication. This has been carried out particularly in developmental psychology (e.g., Branco, 1998, 2002; Fogel & Branco, 1997) and communication studies (e.g., Leeds-Hurwitz, 1995).