Do you remember yawning after the person next to you started yawning? Researchers have correlated ability to yawn with an ability to socially interact. Rather than it being a physiological issue such as boredom or tiredness, yawning as a result of someone else yawning first indicates empathy because we are sharing another person’s yawning experience. A non-clinical study conducted in Tohoku University showed that yawning has more to do with perceptual sensitivity rather than empathy.
So what exactly is the difference between empathy and perceptual sensitivity? Perceptual sensitivity is defined as the amount of detection of slight, low-intensity stimuli from the external environment independent of visual and auditory ability. Perceptual sensitivity focuses more on whether people can perceive cues from their environment, rather than whether these cues cause a response and/or whether people are able to regulate this response.
An example for perceptual sensitivity is simply whether or not you can detect a change in surroundings if someone dims the light by 10%. On the other hand, when someone feels empathy for another, they are experiencing the same emotional changes or state of minds as the other person who undergoes the emotion. A recent study further suggests that the mirror neuron system of the brain is involved in yawning; mirror neurons are considered to be critical for perception and motor actions.
Dogs can “catch” yawning as well, so it seems that yawning is universal among animals
Image Source: Cavouras
To set up baseline perceptual sensitivity, the Tohoku study used a sample size of 41 nonclinical adults. Participants were shown 60 different pictures of someone with a happy expression and 60 different pictures of someone with an angry expression. Then, researchers recorded study participants’ reactions to other people yawning.
The researchers found that perceptual ability is more closely related to contagious yawning than empathy is. It is important to point out that a characteristic of autism is impaired social interaction, manifesting at times in the form of avoiding eye contact or difficulty in judging facial emotions, which indicates lower perceptual sensitivity. It has been postulated that perceptual limitations cause those with autism to be unable to detect someone else’s yawning expression, leading to a significant decrease in yawning as a response to seeing someone else yawn.
Yawning research is intriguing because of the ubiquity of the phenomenon. While recent studies have shifted towards the relationship between yawning and perception, researchers still cannot establish any clear associations. We are only safe to presume that yawning may have multiple causes.
Feature Image Source: Beyer
