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The male beard is one of the most visually salient and sexually dimorphic traits and a hypothesized potential marker of other traits, such as dominance, masculinity, social status, and self-confidence. However, as men can easily alter their facial hair, beards may provide unreliable information about the beard owner's characteristics. Here, we examined whether beards are honest signals of biological (testosterone levels) and psychological (self-reported dominance) traits. Young (M = 21.29, SD = 1.54) and healthy men (N = 97) participated in the study. Their beards were measured directly (using digital calipers) and by self-report. Participants provided saliva samples before and after acute exercise (to assess their testosterone and cortisol levels) and reported their dominance on a 5-item scale. The results showed that beard length (directly measured and self-reported) was not related to testosterone levels or dominance; thus, no evidence was found to support the hypothesis that beards are honest (or dishonest) signals of the beard owners' testosterone levels and dominance.

Human male height is one of the most conspicuous sexually dimorphic, phenotypic characteristics that affect how men are perceived both by men and women, impacting mate selection and intra-sexual competition. Testosterone is a key hormone linked to morphological masculinity and advantage in intra-sexual competition. To date, there have been limited studies linking height with testosterone levels. Here, we examined the change in circulating testosterone levels after physical exercise in 97 healthy and physically active men. Our results show that there was a significant relationship between male stature and the change in testosterone levels, whereas there was no such link between body height and circulating testosterone levels. Therefore, our findings provide evidence that height may indicate male’s adaptive capabilities to physiologically mobilize their bodies when it is needed and/or beneficial.

Research has demonstrated that increases in testosterone (T) concentration can affect the expression of behaviours and preferences that are typical of high mating effort. However, little research has considered whether such T increases affect mating strategy more generally and whether this is achievable using a physical intervention. In this pilot study, we examined whether exercise-induced changes in T covary with, or predict, changes in male mating strategy. Healthy young men (N = 94) completed a measure of short- and long-term relationship preference, before and after a series of short cycling sprints. Salivary T was measured pre- and post-exercise, along with salivary cortisol (C), which is known to moderate some behavioural effects of T. A significant group-level increase in T was observed, though this was smaller than anticipated (~ 10%, d = 0.27) with substantial intragroup variation. No group-level change in C or mating preferences emerged. Testosterone change did not significantly predict a change in short- or long-term mating preference from baseline, even with inclusion of C change as a moderator. The current findings suggest that modest exercise-induced increases in T concentration have little impact on male mating strategies. Pharmaceutical interventions, which produce larger and more consistent T increases, may be required to observe mating strategy change.

The digit ratio (2D:4D) is said to be a potential marker of exposure to prenatal sex steroids. Some studies suggest that the 2D:4D is also linked with the testosterone response to challenging situations due to organizational effect of prenatal hormonal milieu on adult endocrine functioning. However, up to date, there were only four studies (conducted on small samples) that examined the 2D:4D and the testosterone response to a challenging situation (i.e. physical exertion or aggressive context). Here, we examined the relationship between the 2D:4D and the testosterone change under an acute exercise among 97 men. We found that the digit ratios (the right 2D:4D, the left 2D:4D, and the right minus left 2D:4D) were neither predictors of pre-exercise testosterone, nor the change in testosterone level after a cycling task. Our results add a contradictory to previous studies evidence in a discussion on the links of the 2D:4D and the testosterone change.

Turn-taking – the coordinated and efficient transition between the roles of sender and receiver in communication – is a fundamental property of conversational interaction. The turn-taking mechanism depends on a variety of linguistic factors related to syntax, semantics and prosody, which have recently been subject to vigorous research. This contrasts with the relative lack of studies on nonverbal visual signals and cues that can be involved in taking turns at talking. In this paper, we consider the relation between turn-transitions and adaptors: a class of nonverbal behaviors prototypically involving touching one’s own body or manipulating external objects. We recorded 10 semi-scripted conversations between a total of 12 subjects and annotated the material for discrete adaptors and turn borders. We found that participants produced discrete adaptors significantly more frequently close to floor transfers (turn borders). Our result goes against the long-standing tradition of interpreting adaptors as unrelated to speech and, more generally, communicative interaction.

The age-old debate between the proponents of the gesture-first and speech-first positions has returned to occupy a central place in current language evolution theorizing. The gestural scenarios, suffering from the problem known as “modality transition” (why a gestural system would have changed into a predominantly spoken system), frequently appeal to the gestures of the orofacial area as a platform for this putative transition. Here, we review currently available evidence on the significance of the orofacial area in language evolution. While our review offers some support for orofacial movements as an evolutionary “bridge” between manual gesture and speech, we see the evidence as far more consistent with a multimodal approach. We also suggest that, more generally, the “gestural versus spoken” formulation is limiting and would be better expressed in terms of the relative input and interplay of the visual and vocal-auditory sensory modalities.

Niniejszy tekst jest wersją preprint (nie poddaną korekcie) artykułu Orzechowski, S., Sławomir Wacewicz and Przemysław Żywiczyński 2016. "Problem ‘zmiany modalności’ w hipotezach pierwszeństwa gestów w ewolucji języka: w stronę hipotez multimodalnych". Studia semiotyczne 18-19, 335-369. Jego opublikowana wersja jest dostępna pod adresem: http://studiasemiotyczne.pts.edu.pl/tomy/xxviii_xxix_teksty/19.pdf Obszerne fragmenty artykułu weszły w skład książki Żywiczyński, P. i Wacewicz, S. (2015): Ewolucja języka. W stronę hipotez gesturalnych. Toruń, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK za zgodą wszystkich autorów oraz Redaktora Naczelnego pisma. Hipotezy pierwszeństwa gestów, względnie gesturalne, zajmują centralne miejsce w aktualnych rozważaniach nad pojawieniem się i ewolucją ludzkiej zdolności językowej. Zgodnie z nimi język filogenetycznie wywodzi się od systemu komunikacji gestowej, a nie głosowej (choć ta druga możliwość jest bardziej intuicyjna i z racji tego wielu autorów wersję głosową niesłusznie zakłada jako oczywistą). Przyjmujemy tu szeroką definicję gestów, zaliczając do nich większość sygnałów cielesnych w modalności wizualnej, czyli odbieranych wzrokowo. Jakkolwiek same hipotezy gesturalne są szeroko omawiane w literaturze przedmiotu (choć nie polskojęzycznej), wiele opracowań wskazuje na ich zasadniczy problem: jeśli komunikacja językowa miała pierwotnie charakter gestowy to dlaczego, kiedy i w jaki sposób nastąpiła zmiana, czyli przejście języka do modalności głównie głosowej? Jak dotąd problem ten nie znalazł satysfakcjonującego rozwiązania. W naszej pracy, po pierwsze, przybliżamy tę tematykę polskiemu czytelnikowi, krótko referując argumenty na rzecz hipotez gesturalnych, i po drugie, proponujemy rozwiązania problemu zmiany modalności. W zasadniczej części sprowadzają się one do przyjęcia perspektywy multimodalnej, która zakłada, iż ewolucja języka zachodziła z udziałem obu modalności - wizualnej i głosowej - jednocześnie. Założenie to pozwala nie tylko rozwiązać problem zmiany modalności, z jakim borykają się hipotezy pierwszeństwa gestów, ale tłumaczy także głęboką integrację mowy i gestów ucieleśniających ludzką zdolność językową.

In everyday circumstances, humans use a variety of cues to draw rich inferences about the nature of interaction. Among these, we focus on sequences of self-regulatory movements, such as touching behaviours and postural changes, that have long been related to interpersonal coordination understood both in terms of mimicry and synchrony. So far, there has been a severe lack of studies on the third party perception of interactional phenomena, including self-regulators. Here, we investigate which elements of the interactional dynamics induce the perception of interactants' behaviours (represented by self-regulators) as causally related, and show that the most important factor responsible for such attribution is the similarity of observed movements. On a more general plane, we hope to make a step towards uncovering perceptual biases that evolved for interpersonal coordination, thus shedding some light on the human interactional potential and its evolution.

The so-called gestural theories of language origins have remained a central focus of language evolution research for at least a decade. Despite important differences, their varieties underscore the significance of visual, as opposed to vocal, channel of signal transmission. However, language is predominantly spoken; that is (excluding recent technologies, special ecological conditions, or high rates of congenital hearing impairment) it is the vocal modality that contemporary human societies universally use as default for linguistic communication. This immediately leads to the problem of how and why language would have transferred from being mostly-visual to mostly-vocal, which is what many influential researchers (e.g. Burling, 2005; Fitch 2010, Tallerman 2011) raise as a fundamental objection to the gestural variety. In our paper, we address a specific issue within this problem, focusing on one class of gestures orofacial gestures. Employing Hockett’s notion of total auditory feedback, we discuss the role of this feature in the emergence of speech. As detailed in section 2.1., we propose that auditory feedback may offer a partial solution to the modality transition problem.