Before Speech
The Beginning of Interpersonal Communication

As Dr Bullowa says in her introduction, this book explores 'how scientists go about finding out how infants and adults communicate with one another'.

Margaret Bullowa (Author)

9780521295222, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 September 1979

410 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.6 kg

Long before they can make any sounds approaching language, infants can share in communication, though what this means is the subject of much scrutiny. This 1979 volume deliberately draws on people whose different backgrounds have brought them to explore questions that have a bearing on communication in this earliest phase of human infancy. This is, then, as Dr Bullowa says in her introduction, primarily a book about 'how scientists go about finding out how infants and adults communicate with one another'. It is nowhere dogmatic; contributors have all been encouraged to say why they came to do the research reported, how they set about it and what they discovered. Dr Bullowa herself provides a useful introduction which makes its own substantial contribution, while surveying the broad context of the particular research, discussing some of the themes that recur in the book and relating them to the wider literature.

1. Introduction: prelinguistic communication: a field for scientific research M. Bullowa
2. 'The epigenesis of conversational interaction': a personal account of research development M. C. Bateson
3. Evidence of communication in neonatal behavioral assesment T.B. Brazelton
4. Mutual regulation of the neonatal-maternal interactive: context for the origins of communication P.F. Chappell and L.W. Lander
5. Describing the structure of social interaction in infancy G.M. Collis
6. Neonata entrainment and enculturation W.S. Condon
7. Blind infants and their mothers: an examination of the sign system S. Fraiberg
8. One child's protolanguage M.A.K. Halliday
9. Thickening thin data: the maternal tole in devloping communication and language K. Kaye
10. The growth of shared understandings between infant and caregiver J. Newson
11. How wild chimpanzee babies trigger the onset of mother-infant play - and what the mother makes of it F. Plooij
12. Making sense of experience to make sensible sounds D. Ricks
13. Talking and playing with babies: the role of ideologies of child-rearing C.E. Snow, A. de Blauw and G. van Roosmalen
14. Early tactile communication and the patterning of human organization: a New Guinea case study E.R. Sorenson
15. Communication starts with selective attention K. Stensland Junker
16. Communication and cooperation in early infancy: a description of primary intersubjectivity C. Trevarthen
17. Structure of early face-to-face communicative interactions E. Tronick, H. Als and L. Adamson
Bibliography (and citation and names index).

Subject Areas: Child & developmental psychology [JMC]