Communication and Affect: A Comparative Approach

Communication and Affect: A Comparative Approach examines the communication of affective or emotional feelings from a broad phylogenetic and ontogenetic perspective. The book presents basic research findings and theoretical orientations with regards to affective responses and communication involving humans, machines, chimpanzees, monkeys, dogs, and rodents.

Comprised of seven chapters, this volume begins with a discussion on the development of love in primates throughout its entire sequential course, from the mother-infant stage of pious, proper propinquity to the adult stage of seasoned, salacious, seductive success. In all the stages of love, much of the essential social information is supplied by unlearned communications which are rapidly overlaid by a veneer of learning. Subsequent chapters explore attachment and dependence; signs of language in children and chimpanzees; affective aspects of aesthetic communication; the communication of affect and the possibility of human-machine interaction as a dyad; and development of affect in dogs and rodents.

This book should be of use to psychologists, linguists, and educators interested in the evolution and development of communication and affect in mammals.