Development of Communication in Infants: Implications for Stimulus Relations Research

Early forms of stimulus-response relations are learned by infants to communicate with caregivers. The infant communication abilities begin with the learning of eye gazing, joint attention, social referencing, and naming, among others. Learning to engage in these early communication skills facilitates the development of more advanced phenomena seen in equivalence class formations and derived relational responding research. This article discusses evidence of early communication skills that are often required for the emergence of other, more complex forms of stimulus-stimulus relations. We emphasize the importance of establishing these types of operants early in infancy and their implications for developmental research on stimulus relations.