It seems like one could spend some time thinking about how humans developed intelligence in order to find potential rules for that process.

As such, it seems that any intelligent beings we are likely to ever encounter will have been a result of runaway self-referential modeling resulting in procreation (ie plotting to gain power over others of the same species). For them to become a technological species, they would need to find a way to communicate ideas beyond simply showing or teaching. This means some form of language. Sound is a convenient method, but there are others. Sign language, light emission, chemical communication, even something wild like manipulation of magnetic fields are all possibilities.

One must go further to think about how such aliens would act. In my experience, most human interaction boils down to a few specific rules and a few specific goals. The rules as I see them are:

1. A person owns their own body.
2. A person can own things, and places.

To own something means to have exclusive use of and authority over. Use and authority can be transferred to others if the owner agrees to do so, which he will do if he sees a benefit to his goals in such a transfer.

The goals are probably universal:

1. Live long enough to
2. Reproduce
3. Ensure progeny reproduces as well.

These seem simple enough to be universal, which leads me to think that alien psychology won't be that alien, absent physiological differences. That is, unless they have developed the technology necessary to push them through more Singularities than we have been through, perhaps to the point of negating one or more of the above goals. If they are immortal, and no longer seek to reproduce, then they will be utterly foreign to us. I would suspect that a human that has lived for 250 million years would probably be just as foreign, though. Maybe that just means that we have to catch up.