Research reportContagious yawning: the role of self-awareness and mental state attribution
Introduction
Contagious yawning, the onset of a yawn triggered by seeing, hearing, reading, or thinking about another person yawning, is a common phenomenon [22], [23], [24], [28]. Here we show that individual differences in susceptibility to contagious yawning are related to performance on self-face recognition and theory of mind story tasks.
We hypothesized that contagious yawning occurs as a consequence of a theory of mind, the ability to infer or empathize with what others want, know, or intend to do [3], [4], [6], [17], [18], [19], [36]. Seeing or hearing about another person yawn may tap a primitive neurological substrate responsible for self-awareness and empathic modeling which produces a corresponding response in oneself. To test this hypothesis we examined susceptibility to contagious yawning with performance on a self-face recognition task and several theory of mind stories. Schizotypal personality traits [25], [26] found in non-clinical populations that approximate similar, but less severe schizophrenic traits and are negatively correlated with performance on mental state attribution [17], [18] and self-recognition tasks [21], were also measured.
Section snippets
Experiment 1: contagious yawning—the impact of Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire scores
Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) scores have been shown to affect an individual’s ability to process information about the self [20], [21]. We predicted that if contagious yawning was associated with mental state attribution then schizotypal personality traits would negatively affect susceptibility to contagiously yawn, as well.
Experiment 2: relationship between contagious yawning and theory of mind
In order to further test our hypothesis that contagious yawning is related to mental state attribution we compared susceptibility to contagiously yawn with performance on theory of mind tasks. We used three types of theory of mind tasks. We used three stories that assessed an individual’s ability to understand that another person could hold a false belief (so-called first order false belief task [2], [3], [36]). We also used two stories that assessed whether an individual could think about a
Experiment 3: relationship between contagious yawning and self-face recognition
According to a model developed over two decades ago, mental state attribution presupposes self-awareness, i.e. in order to engage in mental state attribution an individual must be able engage in self-introspection [7], [8], [11], [12]. Keenan et al. [14], [15] have shown a left-hand advantage for self-face recognition. Platek and colleagues have demonstrated that the left-hand advantage for processing information about the self is negatively impacted by schizotypal personality traits [20], [21]
General discussion
Thus, in contrast to those that were unaffected by seeing someone yawn, people who showed contagious yawning identified their own faces faster, did better at making inferences about mental states, and exhibited fewer schizotypal personality characteristics. These results suggest that contagious yawning might be related to self-awareness and empathic processing. Our data also imply that contagious yawning may reside in brain substrates which have been implicated in self-recognition [13], [15],
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Darren Ruben, Amy Timlin, Laura Cox, and Lynette Viviel for their assistance with design materials.
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