Chapter 3: Communication in Early Infancy: Some Reflections from an Evolutionary Perspective

The definition of communication is an open question. In a broad sense, communication can be understood as a universal feature of living systems:

Human communication is recognized as unique in the realm of natural phenomena, involving mechanisms, processes, and unfoldings that can be studied through a comparative and evolutionary perspective.

In this chapter, we present a brief review of the major functional contexts of animal communication and some comparative aspects of phylogeny and ontogeny of communication processes in order to discuss data on early infant communication.

Communication phenomena can be classified in a variety of ways. What do animals communicate for? This is the functional question addressed by Tinbergen’s (1951) four “whys,” which can be approached with a classification of the main functional contexts of animal communication: mating, survival, and social signals (Hauser, 1996).