Chan Meingold H M, Tseng Chia-Huei
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
Iperception. 2017 Aug 25;8(4):2041669517726797. doi: 10.1177/2041669517726797. eCollection 2017 Jul-Aug.
Contagious yawning-the urge to yawn when thinking about, listening to, or viewing yawning-is a well-documented phenomenon in humans and animals. The reduced yawn contagion observed in the autistic population suggested that it might be empathy related; however, it is unknown whether such a connection applies to nonclinical populations. We examined influences from both empathy (i.e., autistic traits) and nonempathy factors (i.e., individuals' perceptual detection sensitivity to yawning, happy, and angry faces) on 41 nonclinical adults. We induced contagious yawning with a 5-minute video and 20 yawning photo stimuli. In addition, we measured participants' autistic traits (with the autism-spectrum quotient questionnaire), eye gaze patterns, and their perceptual thresholds to detect yawning and emotion in human face photos. We found two factors associated with yawning contagion: (a) those more sensitive to detect yawning, but not other emotional expressions, displayed more contagious yawning than those less sensitive to yawning expressions, and (b) female participants exhibited significantly more contagious yawning than male participants. We did not find an association between autistic trait and contagious yawning. Our study offers a working hypothesis for future studies, in that perceptual encoding of yawning interacts with susceptibility to contagious yawning.
传染性打哈欠——即当想到、听到或看到打哈欠时就产生打哈欠的冲动——是一种在人类和动物中都有充分记录的现象。在自闭症群体中观察到的传染性打哈欠减少现象表明它可能与同理心有关；然而，这种联系是否适用于非临床人群尚不清楚。我们研究了同理心因素（即自闭症特质）和非同理心因素（即个体对打哈欠、高兴和愤怒面孔的感知检测敏感度）对41名非临床成年人的影响。我们用一段5分钟的视频和20张打哈欠的照片刺激诱发传染性打哈欠。此外，我们测量了参与者的自闭症特质（使用自闭症谱系商数问卷）、目光注视模式，以及他们在人脸照片中检测打哈欠和情绪的感知阈值。我们发现了与打哈欠传染相关的两个因素：（a）那些对检测打哈欠更敏感但对其他情绪表达不敏感的人，比那些对打哈欠表达不敏感的人表现出更多的传染性打哈欠，（b）女性参与者表现出的传染性打哈欠明显多于男性参与者。我们没有发现自闭症特质与传染性打哈欠之间存在关联。我们的研究为未来的研究提供了一个可行的假设，即打哈欠的感知编码与对传染性打哈欠的易感性相互作用。
