This book presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the development of communication from infancy to adulthood, focusing on how communicative competence emerges through socially shared practices. It examines a wide range of communicative forms, such as deceit, white lies, pretense, humor, and irony, and argues that adult communicative registers are acquired through communicative games that children play with adults from an early age. Adopting the view that communication is a fundamental human competence, this book seeks to move beyond the analysis of isolated phenomena to develop a unified theoretical framework capable of accounting for the diversity of communicative behaviors. Although language is used across a wide range of contexts and purposes, the chapters in the book identify core cognitive processes that support communication at different levels of developmental complexity. Drawing on theoretical pragmatics alongside experimental and observational research in cognitive development, the book offers an account of communication as it unfolds in everyday interaction rather than idealized settings. It is intended for researchers and advanced students in developmental psychology, cognitive science, pragmatics, linguistics, and communication studies.

Gabriella Airenti is Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Turin, where she is also affiliated with the Center for Logic, Language, and Cognition. Her research focuses on cognitive pragmatics, intersubjectivity, and the development of communicative abilities in children, including pretense, anthropomorphism, and theory of mind. She has held visiting positions at institutions such as King’s College Cambridge and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and is a former President of the Italian Association for Cognitive Science.