Introduction to the Special Issue on Nonverbal Vocal Communication in Development
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Introduction to the Special Issue on Nonverbal Vocal Communication in Development Manuela Filippa1,2 · Didier Grandjean2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Nonverbal vocal aspects of communication, often related to affective states, are crucial to social interactions not only for animals but also for humans during early infancy, as well as being one of the pillars of human language development and acquisition. The thread that binds together the contributions to this Special Issue is the analysis of nonverbal vocal communication during development, both from ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives. This introduction presents the multiple viewpoints emerging from this Special Issue and delineates future research directions for investigating the nonverbal aspects of vocal communication in early development. Keywords Nonverbal vocal communication · Early infancy · Atypical development · Animal model The nonverbal vocal aspects of communication precede language acquisition in humans, are crucial in nonhuman animals, and go beyond the semantic aspects conveyed through language; they are a critical component of social interactions. Not only do they accentuate or complete the meaning of words, but they can also modify, modulate, or change the interpretation of words (Friedman 1982). These nonverbal components of vocalizations are vital to conveying emotions and other affective states and are able to reinforce emotional bonding, especially in early development. Preverbal infants are continuously exposed to their caregivers’ vocal productions, which are finely tuned to their age and states (Stern et al. 1982), and to the functions and contexts of communication. In recent decades, infant research shed new light on the importance of a coordinated bidirectional proto-conversation between adults and preverbal infants, for their optimal cognitive, social, and emotional development (Jaffe et al. 2001).
* Manuela Filippa [email protected] 1
Neuroscience of Emotion and Affective Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences and Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
2
Division of Development and Growth, Department of Paediatrics, Gynaecology and Obstetrics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
The development of the vocal aspects of infant’s preverbal communication is tightly linked to other nonverbal aspects, such as gestures (Ejiri and Masataka 2001) or gaze behaviors (Crown et al. 2002), which reflect their common participation and cognitive interdependency in the communicative act, which can be produced voluntarily or involuntarily. Vocal expression of emotions has been thoroughly investigated in the last decades, both from a theoretical point of view and through empirical studies (Scherer et al. 2003), by adopting a composite perspective that includes the encoding aspects of vocal signals, their acoustic characteristics, and the decoding phase, in which the partners interpret the com
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