Expression unleashed: The evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication

Abstract

Human expression is open-ended, versatile and diverse, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved functions of which are the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology to explain how and why humans, and only humans, evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity and open-endedness in means and modes of expression. Language use is but one of these modes of expression, albeit one of manifestly high importance. We make cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only language use but novel behaviour in many other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, teaching, punishment and art, all of which are ubiquitous in human societies but relatively rare in other species. Much of this diversity derives from graded aspects of human expression, which can be used to satisfy informative intentions in creative and new ways. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of the many of the most distinctive features of human behaviour, society and culture.

An Investigation of the Modulatory Effects of Empathic and Autistic Traits on Emotional and Facial Motor Responses during Live Social Interactions

“…Facial expressions of emotions serve as important instruments of communication during social interaction [1][2][3]. During such interaction, facial mimicry and emotional contagion mutually influence each other to facilitate social alignment [4].…”

Tradition and invention: The bifocal stance theory of cultural evolution

“…Above all, we propose that if our reliance on culture is what makes humans stand out on the tree of life, then studying the bifocal stances that enable culture may hold the key to understanding the evolutionary origins of human uniqueness. and outline an alternative framework that builds on the cognitive bases of human ostensive communication Heintz & Scott-Phillips, 2022;Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Our main argument is that being addressed by knowledgeable others induces an expectation of relevance in naive learners, which is sufficient to account for both flexible (and potentially innovative) and high-fidelity aspects of cultural transmission.…”

Communication & deniability: Moral and epistemic reactions to denials

“…In light of these findings, here we re-analyse deniability, making distinctions that have not been clearly made in the previous literature on the topic. These distinctions are inspired in particular by the Relevance Theory approach to communication and cognition (e.g., Wilson & Sperber, 2012;Heintz & Scott-Phillips, 2022;Mazzarella, 2021).…”