Multimodality as a safeguard of honesty in communication and language: from Animals to Humans.

In many communication systems, signal receivers profit from honest signals that indicate the signaller's quality, whereas low‐quality signallers should profit from cheating. Under such a conflict of interests between signallers and signal receivers, the maintenance of honest signals presents a puzzle. In theory, honesty can represent an evolutionarily stable strategy, but the actual mechanisms have been studied in few systems only. Here, we investigate honest signalling in a plant species, Brassica rapa, that advertises nectar volumes to pollinators by two honest floral signals; corolla size and the floral volatile phenylacetaldehyde. In a series of experiments we tested for physiological constraints and pollinator behaviours related to honest floral signals and nectar volume, incorporated the result into a mathematical model, and verified its predictions experimentally. While honest floral signals attracted pollinators, the bees’ flower visitation time depended on nectar volume and was associated with the number of seeds that flowers developed. Furthermore, honest floral signals and seed set without pollen limitation both increased after soil fertilisation, indicating nutrient limitation in these traits. The mathematical model which incorporates these findings showed that honest signalling in B. rapa can be maintained by a combination of pollinator behaviour and resource limitation causing differential benefits of nectar production. The study demonstrates how honest floral signalling can evolve as a stable strategy in a plant species. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

The purpose of any social discipline is to understand the society through their theoretical perspectives. Human communication as a social science is also without exception, its purpose is to explain the society by means of inspecting the social information as well as the contents and extensions during the operation of social information system. Social together with its system are complex and comprehensive by nature, which determines human communication existing itself as a comprehensive science with multiple theories, aspects and perspectives. It is reasonable to study with the help of related theories of other subjects in facing concrete research issues and when the existing theories lack enough power to give an explanation. Interpersonal human communication is an important part in human life, the human communication study about is rather few, however. This paper is about to solve this problem, for current human communication cannot explain the barriers occurred in the interpersonal human communication. To deal with such issue that often happens in social life, the author is appeal to information system theories to explain that the trajectory of information changes in the course of human communication could cause barriers.

Al considerar las relaciones prospectivas entre la música y el pensamiento evolutivo es necesario articular claramente a qué nos referimos cuando usamos el término ‘música’. Las investigaciones antropológicas, y crecientemente, cognitivas y neurocientíficas, sugieren que el término posee una aplicabilidad amplia que va más allá de las con-cepciones convencionales de la música como mero entretenimiento. A través de las culturas, la música se presenta activa, interactiva e insertada en un rango amplio de actividades sociales; parece ser un rasgo tan “normal” como el lenguaje en la interacción humana. Sin embargo, a diferencia del lenguaje, los significados de la música, paradóji-camente, parecen ser naturales -la música parece significar lo que suena- y al mismo tiempo indeterminados en su fundación. Este capítulo argumentaráque esta paradoja está en el corazón del rol de la música en la interacción humana. Partiendo de la premisa de que la música se manifiesta en situaciones donde el foco está puesto en la interacción social como un fin en sí mismo (y no como un medio hacia un fin), se sugerirá que la música puede ser mejor conceptualizada como un medio de comunicación que posee rasgos que son óptimos para el manejo de situaciones de incertidumbre social. Se propondrá que puede darse cuenta de al menos algunos de los aspectos del significado en la música a través de su explotación de los mecanismos de comunicación que en otras especies subyacen al fenómeno de “señalización honesta”. Puede postularse que otras raíces de los rasgos del significado musical se hallan en las regularidades específicas de la especie que aparecen en el mapeo entre el afecto y la vocalización humana, mientras que otros emergen como el resultado de las dinámicas contingentes del proceso cultural. Así, la música incorpora dimensiones de significado múltiples con diferentes raíces evolutivas. La disponibilidad simultánea de las tres di-mensiones del significado musical dotan a la experiencia de la música de una intencio-nalidad flotante -la música parece tratar sobre ‘algo’, pero el objeto de ese ‘sobre algo’ es ambiguo-, mientras que la operación de sensibilidades comunicativas generales de la especie le permite a la música la apariencia de una “señal honesta”. Al mismo tiempo, los procesos cognitivos y de comportamiento que permiten que los humanos aliñen sus acciones y sonidos entre sí en el tiempo dentro de un marco de trabajo comúnmente experimentado de pulsos temporalmente regulares y que puede ser específico de los humanos imparten un sentido de afiliación mutua a la experiencia musical colectiva. La música puede ser concebida como un medio de comunicación que es tan vital como el lenguaje para la vida social humana y para las concepciones y compromisos de los humanos con la espiritualidad humana.

Introduction The linguist has reason to be interested in the communication system of other animals. Perhaps the most important reason is that since human language is the product of evolution, it is highly likely that some of the properties of human language have structural similarities (or even precursors) in the communication systems of other animals. By studying animal communication systems, we will therefore learn more about ourselves. Moreover, in studying these systems we may become aware of features that have not been fully appreciated in our own system of communication. Since we are ‘inside’ our own language, it is difficult to maintain a proper perspective on what may be the most salient properties of this system. The study of animal communication, then, in which we can be trained as outside observers, allows us to gain this perspective on our own system. Once we have decided to look at animal communication, we must then decide on how to go about making comparisons among the various animal systems in order to facilitate their comparison with human language and communication. The problem is compounded by the fact that both human and animal communication systems are still the focus of ongoing research, and many features of the communication systems are still controversial. Nevertheless, the inquiry into human communication and animal communication has proceeded far enough so that fruitful comparisons are possible. I will begin with a brief, critical overview of some earlier systems which have been used for comparing human and nonhuman communication (section 12.1). In the next section (12.2) I provide a very brief summary of some of the central features of human language and communication.

The rift between behaviorists and phenomenologists is responsible for much of the misunderstanding about the subject matter of human communication and appropriate research methodology. A comparison and contrast of two perspectives on research suggests that an integrated perspective focuses on meaningful behavior, carefully considers the relation between the research problem and its methodology, and operationalizes subjective experiences by including reliable and valid means of measurement. Essentially, an integrated view allows diversity of methods and maximizes perspective to render meaningful judgments.

Testosterone has recently been proposed as a link between male quality and health and the expression of sexual traits. We investigated the relationship between testosterone and measures of the individual condition and health of males in a natural population of house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus). We also conducted a captive experiment in order to test for the effects of testosterone on resistance to coccidia, which is a common parasite of house finches. Free-living males in better condition had higher testosterone levels and lower corticosterone levels than free-living males in poor condition. In our captive experiment, increased testosterone accelerated the rate of coccidial infection as compared with sham-implanted or gonadectomized males. Although the differences were not significant, free-living males infected with coccidia had lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of corticosterone than males that were not infected. Thus, experimentally elevating testosterone levels in captive males resulted in a higher percentage of infected males, while free-living males with coccidial infection had low testosterone levels. This apparent discrepancy between captive and free-living males in the association of testosterone and disease may be explained by the condition dependence of testosterone. These results suggest that the testosterone-dependent sexual traits reliably indicate male overall condition and health and, thus, females could benefit from assessing potential mates based on these traits.

Among Darwin’s brilliant ideas was his (1871) conception of animal communication signals as adaptive characteristics of a species. The idea was subsequently taken up by the ethologists of Europe in the 1930s (Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch in particular) in their studies of animal signaling systems in nature. For many subsequent researchers, human language was the implicit model for an animal communication system. Although not expecting the same level of complexity, these researchers assumed that animal signals transmitted information from sender to receiver that was honest, and that benefitted them both. However, the honest signaling/mutual benefit view was challenged by new researchers steeped in the sociobiology and behavioral ecology movement of the 1960s. The emphasis on competition in this new field inspired these researchers to reconceive the animal signaling process as one in which the sender manipulates the receiver to the sender’s advantage. This view was challenged in turn when researchers recognized that the receiver was not a passive party in the interaction, but fully capable of manipulating the sender to its advantage. The communication interaction can be viewed as an arm’s race. The handicap principle—the idea that honesty in signaling can be maintained if signals are costly—is one way the receiver may gain an edge in this competition. Eventually, game theory considerations led to the development of a revised perspective in which signals evolve only when both the sender and the receiver benefit on average, and where signals are honest on average. Researchers examining a particular signaling system’s signals these days ask not are the signals honest, but how reliable are the signals.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) social signalling has been found in over 20 vertebrate species so far and is ‘likely the basis for a vertebrate-wide chemosensory communication system’ [1]. Numerous further examples of MHC social signalling have been published since Ruff et al .'s [1] exhaustive review, both demonstrating female reactions to MHC sharing with males (e.g. [2,3]) and male reactions to MHC sharing with females (e.g. [4–7]). When concentrating on experimental studies in humans, 15 papers so far claimed to provide evidence for MHC-linked odours and/or odour preferences (electronic supplementary material, table S1), and a recent meta-analysis concluded that MHC-linked preferences are ‘likely conserved across primates' [8]. Well-worked-out cases of absent MHC social signalling would therefore be interesting exceptions of what seems to be a general rule, and it is important to find and document such exceptions to learn more about the principles of social signalling. However, easy as it is to miss an existing effect (e.g. because of problematic experimental protocols or low statistical power), it is just as challenging to demonstrate that an effect does not exist. Probst et al . [9] argue that they found an example of absent MHC social signalling. They studied men's preferences of women's body odours, following an experimental design that is largely analogous to the one Wedekind et al . [10] had used when they found women's preferences for men's odours to be MHC linked. Probst et al . [9] collected armpit odours from donors and presented eight of them to raters, with four of them being very MHC-dissimilar, and the other four very MHC-similar (i.e. testing only the extremes; Wedekind et al . [10] had presented three of the …

Social life is constituted of interactions with others – others whom we must rapidly classify as friend or foe, as trustworthy or not. Gauging another's trustworthiness relies on successfully reading nonverbal signals – signals that have been selected through human evolution to serve precisely such a communicative function. These deeply ingrained signals – some part of our phylogenetic heritage and some part of our socially constructed communication system – form the unwritten “order” for cooperative encounters, enabling both individuals and societies to survive and thrive. Yet paradoxically, the same course of evolution has also remunerated, with greater prospects for survival, those who manipulate and falsely manufacture such signals; in short, those who cheat, dissemble and deceive. Put differently, the course of human development has produced a system of presumably reliable signals of veracity, authenticity, trust and trustworthiness, while simultaneously conferring advantages on sham portrayals of those same signals. The use of dishonest signals is not confined to humans; natural selection has also rewarded sophisticated forms of cheating among all manner of living organisms (Greenfield, 2006). Consequently, these nonverbal signals, many of which are universal and have similarities among other species, are among the most important for humans to produce and read and the most useful for computational methods to detect and track. In what follows, we foreground those aspects of social signaling related to veracity that have widespread use and recognition. These are the kinds of signals that Burgoon and Newton (1991) identified as corresponding to a social meaning model in that they are recurrent expressions that have consensually recognized meanings within a given community. In this chapter, we first provide the reader background on the nature of the aforementioned signals. Next, we discuss automated methods for human nonverbal communication computing , i.e., methods we used for identifying and tracking such signals. Then, we discuss computer vision technologies using sensors operating in different wavelengths of the infrared band and not only the visible band, which is conventionally used. We conclude with recommendations for promising future research directions where the latest technologies can be applied to this elemental aspect of social signaling.

To compete over limited parental resources, young animals communicate with their parents and siblings by producing honest vocal signals of need. Components of begging calls that are sensitive to food deprivation may honestly signal need, whereas other components may be associated with individual-specific attributes that do not change with time such as identity, sex, absolute age and hierarchy. In a sib-sib communication system where barn owl (Tyto alba) nestlings vocally negotiate priority access to food resources, we show that calls have individual signatures that are used by nestlings to recognize which siblings are motivated to compete, even if most vocalization features vary with hunger level. Nestlings were more identifiable when food-deprived than food-satiated, suggesting that vocal identity is emphasized when the benefit of winning a vocal contest is higher. In broods where siblings interact iteratively, we speculate that individual-specific signature permits siblings to verify that the most vocal individual in the absence of parents is the one that indeed perceived the food brought by parents. Individual recognition may also allow nestlings to associate identity with individual-specific characteristics such as position in the within-brood dominance hierarchy. Calls indeed revealed age hierarchy and to a lower extent sex and absolute age. Using a cross-fostering experimental design, we show that most acoustic features were related to the nest of origin (but not the nest of rearing), suggesting a genetic or an early developmental effect on the ontogeny of vocal signatures. To conclude, our study suggests that sibling competition has promoted the evolution of vocal behaviours that signal not only hunger level but also intrinsic individual characteristics such as identity, family, sex and age.

When facing dishonest behavior of any form, individuals may choose to punish in order to enhance future honesty from others, even if it is costly for the punishers. Such behavior can be found ubiquitously in human and animal communications, suggesting that it may play an important role in the evolution of honest signaling or reliable communication. By applying Evolutionary Game Theory to the Philip Sidney game, we provide a computational model to investigate whether costly punishment can be a viable strategy for the evolution of honest signaling. We identify four different forms of dishonesty, and study how punishing them affects the level of honesty in the final outcome of evolutionary dynamics. Our results show that punishing those that lie can significantly boost honest signaling when conflicts are moderate and signals are cheap or cost-free. It hence provides an important alternative to the well-known Handicap Principle, which states that honest signaling can evolve only if signals are sufficiently costly for their senders. Furthermore, punishing greedy responses promotes honest signaling if conflicts of interest are high and signals are costly. Lastly, punishing timid or worried individuals does not lead to a clear improvement of honesty.

Face-to-face communication conveys social context as well as words. It is this social signaling that allows new information to be smoothly integrated into a shared, group-wide understanding. Social signaling includes signals of interest, determination, friendliness, boredom, and other "attitudes" toward a social situation. Psychologists speculate that social signaling may have evolved as a way to establish hierarchy and group cohesion because social signaling functions as a subconscious discussion about relationships, resources, risks, and rewards. In many situations the nonlinguistic signals that serve as the basis for this social discussion are just as important as conscious content for determining human behavior. In what follows we discuss challenges in exploratory processing of social signals and tools that allow us to predict human behavior and sometimes exceed even expert human capabilities. These tools potentially permit computer and communications systems to support social and organizational roles instead of viewing the individual as an isolated entity. Example applications include automatically patching people into socially important conversations, instigating conversations among people in order to build a more solid social network, and reinforcing family ties.

Human language is probably the most complex communication system in the living world. It is investigated by various scientific disciplines, including linguistics, neuroscience, or cultural studies. However, despite this large and interdisciplinary effort, one key question has remained open and continues to perplex the scientific community; how could such an intricate system evolve? Comparative research on our extant evolutionary neighbours—the non-human primates—is often considered a good starting point to investigate the origins and evolution of human language. As humans communicate mainly with speech, primate vocal behaviour is the natural target of investigation, although this approach is not uniformly accepted. Behaviourist theories, in particular, characterise primate vocal behaviour as a predominantly hard-wired system, arguing that not much can be learned from it regarding language evolution. On the other hand, there is growing evidence for a considerable cognitive component in non-human primate communication, which often points to early signs of flexibility and indications of gradual evolutionary patterns more generally. In this thesis, I ventured to further our understanding of the flexibility in non-human primate communication systems through series of field experiments on wild South African vervet monkeys. First, I assessed the capacity of vervet monkeys to socially learn novel call-context associations. Using unfamiliar animal models in conjunction with alarm call playbacks, I showed that monkeys rapidly associated alarm calls with these models, evidenced by high vigilance towards them in the subsequent encounter. Furthermore, some juveniles also produced alarm calls similar to the playbacks they heard during the first encounter, showing how rapid social learning could influence call comprehension and usage in this species. In a second experiment, I tested the functional flexibility of vocalisations by providing wild vervet monkeys with opportunities to socially learn a novel usage of move-grunts to obtain food rewards. I worked with two groups that differed in the complexity of the learning stimuli provided during the experiments. For the first group of monkeys, I paired playback of movegrunt with a food dispenser providing a reward, such that the call predicted food as a simple conditioning stimulus. In the second group, I provided subjects with a demonstration video of a conspecific producing a move-grunt in order to activate the food dispenser and obtain a reward. While I did not find any evidence for relevant learning in the first group, a juvenile female from the second group started to produce her own move-grunts to obtain food rewards, suggesting that primates can learn to produce calls in completely novel circumstances if provided with the right social input. The focus of the third experiment was on flexibility in call perception. I examined whether vervet monkeys, when confronted with referentially ambiguous calls, use contextual information to respond to them. I addressed this by probing them with male 'leopard' alarm calls, which can naturally be given to terrestrial predators or during intergroup encounters. In the experiment, I played back leopard alarms either during natural between-group encounters or in a control situation. The subjects showed anti-predator responses and looked for additional information in control but not inter-group situations, suggesting that call meaning in primate communication is subject to simple forms of pragmatic inference. The results of these experiments indicate that non-human primate vocal communication rests on a primitive cognitive infrastructure that, within the human lineage, could have gradually evolved into the complex communication system seen in today's human languages. Finally, I conclude the thesis by proposing a classification scheme for non-human primate vocalisations, based on differences in underlying cognitive complexity, and briefly speculate about the future of primate research in light of emerging technologies that have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the evolution of human and non-human communication.

The screenshot feature has offered human communication researchers a way to document participants’ digital lives without technical expertise nor compromising ecological validity. Despite its widespread utility, there have been limited remarks on the perils of the screenshot feature as a methodological tool to capture the digital world. This article reflects on human communication research which has leveraged the screenshot feature. In doing so, I focus on bystanders , or non-consenting participants whose data are implicated by researchers’ use of the screenshot feature. Considering relevant US law, internationally recognized ethics frameworks, and user expectations across digital platforms from which screenshots are collected, this article offers guidelines for researchers and policymakers about usage of and building formal restrictions around the screenshot feature, respectively. I argue usage of the screenshot feature in human communication research must (1) obscure sensitive and extraneous participant data, (2) recognize platform-specific user expectations, and (3) protect bystander privacy.

The dimension of obtained effect size (OES) was examined in this report. The 1977 volumes of Communication Monographs, Human Communication Research, and the Journal of Communication were reviewed, and a comparison of OES magnitude, reporting, and interpretation was conducted. Additional data gleaned from the 1975, 1976, and 1978 volumes of Human Communication Research were also included. The magnitude of experimental effects was relatively high in Communication Monographs and Human Communication Research. The number of authors reporting OES was most pronounced in Human Communication Research. The role of OES in relation to significance was discussed, and some recommendations for the reporting of data were advanced.