Why yawning can spread

Media contact: Dee Dee Grays , You asked: Why are yawns contagious? It's not just imitation; your yawns can make other people feel the urge to mimic.

Facebook 0 Tweet 0. Author Details. Dominic Hernandez. NewsHour Shop. About Feedback Funders Support Jobs. Close Menu. Email Address Subscribe. What do you think? Leave a respectful comment. Close Comment Window. Yes Not now. By — Teresa Carey Teresa Carey. Leave a comment. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. Why are yawns contagious? Why do we yawn? Using transcranial magnetic stimulation TMS , the researchers measured the participants' brain activity during the experiments. In one experiment, the people were asked to either try and stifle their yawns when viewing the yawning videos, or yawn freely.

Then, the participants were asked to do the opposite. In another experiment, the participants were given the same instructions, but the researchers also applied electrical currents to the people's scalps.

These currents were meant to stimulate the motor cortex, which is thought to control yawning. During the experiments, the participants were asked to estimate their urge to yawn on a sliding scale. All experiments were carried out in accordance with approved human ethics guidelines, and all participants provided informed consent prior to partaking in this study.

Participants were provided brief instructions on how to wear and use the VR headset and were instructed to pay close attention to a contagious yawning stimulus that would be presented within the simulation during testing. The stimulus presented in VR was the same as in our previous study 42 , which was initially developed by Platek et al. All clips were randomized, and were presented in aspect ratio details on screen distance and placement per experiment below.

The experiment was designed for VR and executed using Unity The virtual room was calibrated so that participants could sit comfortably on a swivel chair facing the VR computer. Participants were given no explicit instructions regarding head movement, so they were free to move within the virtual environment. No sound accompanied the VR stimuli. A repeated-measures design was used whereby participants sampled in each of the five experiments were exposed to two separate contagious yawning stimulus presentations in VR that varied in the degree of social presence one high, one low; see below.

The experimental block order was counterbalanced, and each presentation was separated by a 5-minute interval to avoid carryover effects of yawn contagion from one condition to the next 61 , Following exposure to each condition in the virtual environment, participants removed the Vive VR headset and filled out a brief paper questionnaire about their yawning behavior see Supplemental Material In addition, participants were covertly recorded by a webcam on the laptop running the Vive software in the testing room which provided an objective measurement of yawning.

Given there is also substantial agreement between video-confirmed and self-report yawning under similar laboratory conditions 8 , 41 , questionnaire responses were used for participants when the webcam recordings were disrupted or participants requested their videos not be scored Although concerns have been raised about the possibility of mislabeling some spontaneous yawns as contagious 63 , the former are very infrequent 10 and predominantly clustered within the hours just prior to sleep and immediately after waking 31 , Furthermore, to date, spontaneous yawns have not been observed across any other VR experiments within this laboratory A.

Kingstone, personal communication. Due to non-normal distributions of the yawning data across each of the five experiments, the number of contagious yawns was compared across social presence conditions using a Wilcoxon signed rank test. For Experiment 5, a Wilcoxon signed rank test was also used to compare the immersive properties between the two social presence conditions, while Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare how these scores varied both between participants that yawned or not as well as those that reported the urge to yawn or not.

This experiment was designed to investigate how contagious yawning to stimuli presented in VR was influenced by the presence of a researcher in the testing room.

The VR room was created using Unity Participants sat on a chair in the middle of a white virtual floor surrounded by the default Unity skybox see Fig. Data were excluded from five participants because the VR computer crashed or did not run properly.

Using a repeated-measures design, participants were each exposed to two separate conditions order counterbalanced while viewing the contagious yawning stimulus. In the Researcher Absent low social presence condition, the same researcher indicated that he would be leaving the room during testing. There were no significant differences in the age or sex ratio of the participants, hours of sleep the night before, or testing times between experimental block orders.

This experiment was designed to investigate how contagious yawning was influenced by the presence of an implicitly recording webcam see Fig. The virtual environment was the same as in Experiment 1, with the exception of the additional virtual webcam placed just above the presentation screen.

The webcam subtended an approximately 4. A total of 22 participants 13 female; Data were excluded from one participant because the VR computer crashed. Using a repeated-measures design, participants were exposed to two separate conditions order counterbalanced while viewing the contagious yawning stimulus. In the Webcam ON high social presence condition, the webcam had a bright red light on it, while in the Webcam OFF low social presence condition no light was present.

The researcher indicated that they would be leaving the room during testing for both conditions. This experiment was designed to investigate how contagious yawning was influenced by the presence of an explicitly recording webcam positioned just above the presentation screen in VR. The virtual environment was the same as in Experiment 2, with the exception of a red light placed on the top edge of the virtual webcam.

A total of 21 participants 17 female; In the Webcam ON high social presence condition, participants were informed just prior to fitting the Vive device that the webcam above the stimulus would be recording their behavior during the simulation although no light was present as in Experiment 2. This experiment investigated how contagious yawning to stimuli presented in VR was influenced by the presence of an onlooking, but motionless, humanoid avatar within the same simulated environment depicted in Experiments 1—3.

The avatar was 0. A total of 22 participants 17 female; Using a repeated-measures design, participants were exposed to two separate conditions order counterbalanced. In the Avatar Facing Towards high social presence condition, a humanoid avatar was positioned to the right of the stimulus presentation screen looking directly at the participant during testing see Fig.

In the Avatar Facing Away low social presence condition, this figure was in the same location but oriented degrees to face in the opposite direction see Fig. This experiment was designed to investigate how contagious yawning was influenced by the presence of an onlooking humanoid avatar within a more realistic and representative virtual simulation.

In particular, the virtual scene was designed to represent a more typical laboratory environment similar to our past research 42 with a smaller presentation screen positioned on a desktop Fig. The humanoid avatar in this experiment which was the same figure used in Experiment 4 was also designed to be more realistic and human-like, displaying naturalistic movement. The virtual shelf opposite the avatar was 3. For this experiment we had participants complete a previously validated questionnaire 53 to assess how the immersive properties of the VR experience varied between conditions and whether it predicted contagious yawning within this context.

A total of 22 participants 15 female; Data were excluded from one participant because the VR computer crashed or did not run properly and from one other because they did not look at the stimulus during testing. In the Avatar Movement Swaying high social presence condition, the humanoid avatar was positioned to the right of the stimulus presentation screen swaying slightly and displaying naturalistic limb movements while looking directly at the participant during testing video demonstration in Supplemental Material.

In the Avatar Movement Still low social presence condition, this figure was in the same location and orientation but remained completely motionless as in Experiment 4.

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