Andrew
N. Meltzoff : «It is important to
distinguish between emotional contagion and true
empathy, which is different in that it involves
the capacity to hold both your own emotional
state and another's simultaneously - rather than
to just "catch" their emotion and feel it as
your own. On the basis of the research in
infants, emotional contagion precede empathy in
developmental terms and preceding both of these,
in the very youngest newborn babies, is the
ability to imitate another's actions and
expressions.»
The manifold nature
of interpersonal relations: the quest for a
common mechanism.Vittorio
Gallese
Andrew
N. Meltzoff; Jean Decety : What imitation
tells us about social cognition: a rapprochement
between developmental psychology and cognitive
neuroscience
There is disagreement in the literature about
the exact nature of the phenomenon of empathy.
There are emotional, cognitive, and conditioning
views, applying in varying degrees across
species. An adequate description of the ultimate
and proximate mechanism can integrate these
views. Proximately, the perception of an
object's state activates the subject's
corresponding representations, which in turn
activate somatic and autonomic responses. This
mechanism supports basic behaviors (e.g., alarm,
social facilitation, vicariousness of emotions,
mother-infant responsiveness, and the modeling
of competitors and predators) that are crucial
for the reproductive success of animals living
in groups. The "Perception-Action Model" (PAM)
together with an understanding of how
representations change with experience can
explain the major empirical effects in the
litterature (similarity, familiarity, past
experience, explicit teaching and salience). It
can also predict a variety of empathy disorders.
The interaction between the PAM and prefrontal
functioning can also explain different levels of
empathy across species and age groups. This view
can advance our evolutionary understanding of
empathy beyond inclusive fitness and reciprocal
altruism and can explain different levels of
empathyacross individuals, species, stages of
development, and situations.(a juvenile
chimpanzee comforts a distressed adult)
Abstract : While yawning is an
example of behavioral continuity within mammals,
the contagion of yawning, that is yawning after
seeing someone else yawning, is only present in
humans. We proposed that contagion of yawning is
only possible in species showing altogether
empathy, TOM and imitation and other
perspective-taking capabilities.
Preston and de Waal claimed that the
PA Model might help explaining and making
testable predictions about empathy. This model
might also explain contagion of yawning. It
might as well predicts batting average in
baseball or someone touching his head when hit
by a falling apple as Newton might have done and
many other phenomena from reflexes to cognitive
empathy. But, contrary to other mentioned
phenomena, cognitive empathy and other
phenomena, like imitation, theory of mind and
perspective-taking requires representations of
other's feelings, knowledge or actions. A
fit-all model becomes useless. Yet the issue of
behavioral continuity supported by a structural
continuity (homology) remains a valid and
interesting question. Before presenting our
argument, we would like to raise some semantic
problems. It should be reminded that when a
label is given to a concept, it has also been
defined, initially and this initial definition
should always be first recalled, instead of an
ad hoc one. In addtion as items in a category
share at least one feature, a concept has at
least one feature that distinguishes it from
other more or less related concept (cf empathy,
sympathy, contagion communication). Using a
concept definition looselyor forgetting the
feature that makes a concept unique leads to
confusion that might preclude to clarify the
actual issues. Empathy is a phenomenon that
implies an "other". It may be then one of the
properties of at least social species. However,
empathy should not be confounded with other
social phenomena. Communication is not empathy:
reacting to other's actions, as in agonistic
interactions or even in play, does not
necessarily imply sharing his feelings. In these
actual interactions, complementarity, yet
differences in affective and emotional states,
is the rule. Complementarity is also involved in
many other cases of social adjustment. Reacting
to newborns or infants expression of discomfort
does not at all imply that the potential
caregivers have a representation of the peculiar
feelings of an infant, specific to this age
class. In many vertebrate species infant's
features function as strong releasers for older
conspecific. Alarm contagion might be achieved
by a mere conditionning at an individual level
in absence of perception of others'feelings and
fear state. Therefore communication should not
be taken as a synonymous of empathy and vice
versa. And contagion should not be confounded
with synchronization of activities triggered by
an external or internal stimulus perceptible or
perceived by several individuals independently.
Contagion of yawning and empathy.
Yawning is a behavior that is homologous in all
mammals and is claimed to be present in many
vertebrate species (Deputte 1974, 1994). However
it shows some differences within mammals. While
it is frequently associated with stretching in
many carnivore and rodent species (Räkeln
syndrom, Tembrock 1962), it is often divorced
from this association in primates. While, in
nonhuman primates, there is a close relationship
between testosterone and yawning (Goy &
Resko 1972, Deputte et al. 1994), leading to
adult males yawning much more frequently than
adult females, such a relationship does not
exist in humans (Provine & Hamernik 1986).
And finally "Infectiousness" in yawning (Provine
1989) is a feature that is characteristic in
humans. This contagion should not be confounded
to the synchronization that is documented for
"rest yawns" in some species of monkeys (Deputte
1994). Individuals from all age-sex classes yawn
most frequently when they wake up from night
sleep or midday drowsiness. As these phases are
synchronous for all members of the group, "rest
yawns" are consequently also synchronous. Though
yawns from different individuals might follow
each other within a delay of 2 minutes, there is
only few instances where one individual yawns
after perceiving the yawn of a conspecific as
predicted by the PAM. Therefore contagion in
yawning is absent in monkeys and present in
humans. This is not that surprising as many
other behavioral phenomena are also specific to
humans despite continuity in structures within
primates. Contagion in yawning does imply the
perception of other's yawn before yawning.
However there is no emotion to be shared in
contagious yawning only state of drowsiness or
sleep/awake cycle phase. Therefore contagion of
yawning is no empathy. Contagion of yawning is
not imitation either. Though the contagion of
yawning remains a puzzling issue, we proposed
that it is related to other phenomena involving
perspective taking. Such perspective taking
phenomena range from imitation, to "theory of
mind" (TOM) and to empathy. All these phenomena,
but empathy, have been demonstrated only in
humans and apes (Premack & Woodruff 1978,
Visalberghi & Fragaszy 1990…). We then
suggest that "true empathy", as a conscious act,
is also restricted to these species. As proposed
by the authors, empathy, especially "cognitive
empathy", is a property of the great development
of neurological frontal structures. In humans,
infants do not show contagion of yawning before
2 years of age, when they also show
self-recognition and imitation. In addition only
humans show the Gilles de la Tourette syndrome,
which is an excess of imitation. Therefore there
is convergent evidence that showing a general
capacity of representing others' mind,
knowledge, feelings, in social contexts leads
also to contagion of behaviors which involve
only basic state, like yawning. If a continuity
is claimed for empathy, the presence of
contagion of yawning, as derived from empathy,
only in humans, questions this continuity. It
remains to study yawning and its possible
contagion in apes to document further this
possible discontinuity due to the great
development of cerebral frontal structures.
Deputte, B.L.
(1974). Revue sur le comportement de
baîllement chez les
vertébrés. Bull. Int. S.F.E.C.A.,
1: 26-35.
Deputte, B.L.
(1978). Etude du baîllement chez deux
espèces de Cercopithecidae, Cercocebus
albigena albigena Gray et Macaca fascicularis
Raffles: recherche des facteurs de
causalité et de fonction. Mise en
évidence des facteurs
socio-bioénergétiques. Doctoral
Thesis. University of Rennes I.
Deputte, B.L.
(1994). Ethological study of yawning in
pirmates. I. Quantitative analysis and study of
causation in two species of Old World monkeys
(Cercocebus albigena and Macaca
fascicularis).Ethology, 98: 221-245.
Deputte, B.L. &
Fontenelle, A. (1980). Menace et
baîllement chez Macaca fascicularis:
intérêt d'une étude
électromyoraphique comparée. Biol.
Behav., 5: 47-54.
Goy, R.W. & Resko, J.A. (1972). Gonadal
hormones and behavior of normal and
pseudo-hermaphroditic nonhuman female primates.
Rec. Progr. Horm. Res., 28: 707-733.
Premack, D. & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does
the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? The
Behavioral and the Brain Sciences, 3:
615-636.
Provine,
R.R. (1989). Faces as releasers of
contagious yawning: an approach to face
detection using normal human subjects. Bull.
Psychon. Soc., 27:211-214.
Tembrock, G. (1962). Zur Strukturanalyse des
Kampfverhalten bei Vulpes. Behaviour, 19:
261-282.
Visalberghi, E., & Fragaszy D.M. (1990).
Do monkeys ape? In: "Language" and intelligence
in monkeys and apes, ed. S.T. Parker & K.R.
Gibson, Cambridge University Press.
Hadidian J
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