University of Geneva, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Division of Neurorehabilitation, Avenue de Beau-Séjour 26, 1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 Apr;35(5):1302-4. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.12.004. Epub 2010 Dec 17.
Gallup (this issue) believes that our recent review on the function of yawning (Guggisberg et al., 2010) is unbalanced and that it ignores evidence for his thermoregulation hypothesis. Here we address these criticisms and show them to be untenable. While we never claimed that the social hypothesis of yawning has "definite experimental support", we emphasize the importance of experimental evidence for specific effects of yawns when considering why we yawn. The only specific effect of yawning that could be demonstrated so far is its contagiousness in humans, some non-human primates, and possibly dogs, whereas all studies investigating physiological consequences of yawns were unable to observe specific yawn-induced effects in the individual of any species. The argument that from an evolutionary perspective, yawns must have a "primitive" physiological function arises from imprecise reasoning.
盖洛普（本期）认为，我们最近对打哈欠功能的综述（古杰斯伯格等人，2010）不平衡，并且忽视了他的体温调节假说的证据。在这里，我们将讨论这些批评，并证明它们站不住脚。虽然我们从未声称打哈欠的社会假说“有明确的实验支持”，但我们强调在考虑为什么打哈欠时，实验证据对于打哈欠的具体影响的重要性。迄今为止，唯一可以证明的打哈欠的具体影响是它在人类、一些非人类灵长类动物和可能的狗中的传染性，而所有研究打哈欠生理后果的研究都无法在任何物种的个体中观察到特定的打哈欠引起的影响。从进化的角度来看，打哈欠必然具有“原始”生理功能的观点源于不精确的推理。
