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les articles sur la contagion du
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articles about contagious
yawning
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- The aim of this experimental study is to
understand the developmental trend of a
behaviour having social features as contagious
yawning.While spontaneous yawning already occurs
in human foetuses and modifies across
lifespan,little is known about developmental
changes of yawning as a "response" to a social
stimulus, that is contagious yawning.
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- Differently from spontaneous yawning,
occuring very early in life, contagious yawning
appears for the first time at five years of age,
probably linked to the acquisition of a Theory
of Mind (ToM). The contagious effect of yawning
is also observed in young adults, but no data
are available in elderly subjects. We
investigated the contagious sensitivity to
yawning in the elderly evaluating the contagious
effect of yawning in 22 young adults (range
18-35 years), 10 young-old subjects (range 57-67
years) and 9 old-old subjects (range 71-87
years). All subjects underwent a stimulus
condition, coupled with the respective control
condition.The stimulus and control conditions
consisted of video clips of young adults
performing respectively yawns and smiles. The
number of yawns performed by each subject during
each stimulus and control condition was compared
in order to assess the contagious effect.
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- The contagious effect of yawning was present
in young subjects and young-old subjects,
whereas it seems to disappear in old-old
subjects.The parallel changes of contagious
yawning and ToM abilities across the lifespan
suggest that similar mechanisms are involved in
ToM abilities, like in contagious sensitivity to
yawning. Besides, changes in the response to
other's people yawns during very old age could
reflect ToM difficulties, reported in old-old
subjects, mainly in the cognitive component of
ToM.
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- -Giganti F,
Hayes MJ, Akilesh MR, Salzarulo P. Yawning
and behavioral states in premature infants. Dev
Psychobiol. 2002;41(3):289-96.
- -Giganti
F, Hayes MJ Cioni G, Salzarulo P Yawning
frequency and distribution in preterm and near
term infants assessed throughout 24-h recordings
Infant Behav & Development
2007;30(4):641-647
- -Giganti
F, Ziello ME Contagious and spontaneous
yawning in autistic and typically developing
children CPL 2009
- -Giganti
F, Zilli I. The daily time course of
contagious and spontaneous yawning among humans.
J Ethol 2011;29(2):215-216
- -Giganti
F, Zilli I, Aboudan S, Salzarulo P. Sleep,
sleepiness and yawning. Front Neurol Neurosci.
2010;28:42-6.
- -Giganti
F, Salzarulo P. Yawning throughout life.
Front Neurol Neurosci. 2010;28:26-31
- -Giganti F,
Toselli M, Ramat S. Developmental trends in
a social behaviour: contagious yawning in the
elderly. Giornale di Psicologia dello Sviluppo.
2012;101:111-117
- -Giganti
F, Guidi S, Ramat S, Zilli I, Raglione LM, Sorbi
S, Salzarulo P. Yawning: A behavioural
marker of sleepiness in de novo PD patients.
Parkinsonism Relat Disord 2013
- -Zilli
I, Giganti F, Salzarulo P. Yawning in
morning and evening types. Physiol Behav
2007;91(2-3):218-222
- -Zilli
I, Giganti F, Uga V. Yawning and subjective
sleepiness in the ederly. J Sleep Res
2008;17:3003-308
- Introduction
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- The development of several social behaviours
has been extensively studied, but scarce
attention has been devoted to a recurrent
behaviour that modifies across the life span
also having social features, namely yawning
(Walusinski, 2010).
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- Indeed, yawning is a behaviour, which occurs
spontaneously or can be elicited by other people
yawning (Provine, 2005). This last behaviour,
usually named "contagious yawning", can be
considered a social behaviour, whose changes and
development, can be linked to other social ones.
Several studies indeed addressed the question
whether mechanisms underlying contagious yawning
relate to the capacity for empathy (Anderson
& Meno, 2003; Senju et al., 2007; Platek,
Critton, Myers & Gallup, 2003;
Schürmann et al., 2005; Nahab, Hattori,
Saad & Hallet, 2009).
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- Several studies addressed the phylogenetic
and ontogenetic changes of spontaneous yawning.
It is a behaviour common to several species,
observed in birds, fishes, amphibians, reptiles,
as well as in mammals and primates, including
1mmans (Baenninger 1997; Walusinski &
Deputte, 2004).
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- In humans, spontaneous yawning is related to
sleep/wake transitions and time of the day,
probably reflecting the time course of
sleepiness (Giganti,Zilli,Aboudan &
Salzarulo, 2010). Spontaneous yawning occurs
early in life and it modifies across
development. Its presence has been documented
already in the foetus from 12-14 weeks of
gestational age (deVries,Visser & Prechtl,
1982; Walusinski, Kurjak, Andonotopo &
Azumendi, 2005).
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- In preterm-born infants approaching term
age, yawn incidence significantly decreases,
mainly during the day, probably due to the
developmental modification of circadian and
homeostatic control of sleep and wake occurring
in this period of life (Giganti, Hayes, Cioni
& Salzarulo, 2007). In infancy, during the
first six months of life after birth, Wolff
(1987) reported that yawning usually occurs
before sleep starting as a signal of sleepiness
or sleep imminence. In children, specifically
when they attend primary school, the number of
yawns seems to increase with respect to previous
ages (Koch, Montagner & Soussignan, 1987:
Chouard & Bigot-Massoni, 1990). In the young
adult ages 17-35 years (Baenninger, Binkley
& Baenninger, 1996), the frequency of
yawning is about 7-8 over a 24-hour period, with
large differences between individuals (range of
yawns 0-30). In the elderly the frequency of
yawns is further modified (Zilli, Giganti &
Up, 2008). Healthy elderly subjects aged 70-84
yawn less frequently than young subjects aged
20-31, mainly during morning and mid-afternoon
hours. In particular, the lower sleepiness
levels reported by elderly during morning hours
could account for the reduced yawning observed
in this part of the day (Zilli et al.,
2008).
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- As previously mentioned, besides a
spontaneous behaviour, related to the regulation
of vigilance levels, yawning can be evoked by
viewing or hearing other people yawning, namely
it can be a "response" to a social stimulus.
Studies performed with adults aged 18-54 years
reported that the view of yawning is contagious
in 55% of subjects within 5 minutes (Provine,
1986) and thinking about yawning could induce it
in 88 % of subjects, within 30 minutes (Provine,
2005). It is noteworthy that differently from
spontaneous yawning, occurring very early in
life, yawning evoked by other people yawning
appears for the first time at four to five years
of age (Anderson & Meno, 2003).The time lag
between the emergence of the two kinds of
yawning leads to hypothesize different factors
underlying spontaneous and contagious yawning.
Specifically, Anderson and Meno (2003) proposed
that, in children the occurrence of contagious
yawning as a response to a psychological
stimulus (a yawn produced by another person)
might reflect both self-awareness and social
awareness. Then, contagious yawning could be a
type of behaviour triggered by factors most
likely linked to developmental acquisition, for
example, sensitivity to other people's behavior.
This could explain why contagious yawning is not
present in children less than 5 years old and
why there is a lack of contagious yawning in
subjects with impaired empathy and impaired
social skills (Scnju et al., 2007; Giganti &
Esposito Ziello, 2009). Moreover, other authors
(Platek et al., 2003; Schiirmann et al., 2005),
proposed a link between contagious yawning and
empathy also for adults. Specifically, Platek
and co-workers (2003) comparing susceptibility
to contagious yawning with performance on a
self-face recognition task, on several theory of
mind stories, and on a measure of schizotypal
personality traits, found that the
susceptibility to contagious yawning was
positively related to performance on self-face
recognition and faux pas theory of mind
stories,and negatively related to schizotypal
personality traits. Schürmann and
colleagues (2005), as well, using functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while subjects
watched videotaped yawns, found significant
increases in the blood oxygen level in the right
posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) and
bilaterally in the anterior STS, areas usually
responding to social cues.
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- Whereas the contagious effect of yawning has
been explored in infants (Millen & Anderson,
2010), in children (Anderson & Meno, 2003;
Senju et al., 2007; Giganti & Esposito
Ziello, 2009) arid in adults (Provine,
1986,1989), no study up until now, has
investigated contagious yawning in the elderly.
Taking into account that contagious yawning
shows peculiar developmental trends with respect
to spontaneous yawning, we are interested in
careftilly analysing, not only its presence, but
also its changes in the elderly. To this
purpose, the aim of this study was to
investigate the occurreiice of contagious effect
of yawning in three age groups, young adults,
young-old subjects and old-old subjects, while
viewing another person yawning and to verify how
the frequency of contagious yawns differs among
these three age groups.
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- Discussion
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- Our results showed that both young adults
and elderly people were more likely to yawn
while observing yawns rather than to yawn while
viewing a comparable series of smiles, similarly
to what reported by Provine (2005) in middle age
subjects. Nevertheless, whereas the contagious
effect of yawning is observed in young adults
and young old subjects before 70 years old, it
seems to disappear later in life, that is, among
subjects aged 71-87.
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- As previously mentioned, spontaneous yawning
significantly decreases between ages 70 and 84
in the elderly (Zilli, Giganti & Uga, 2008),
then it can be inferred that the fading of the
contagious effect of yawning in old-old
subjects, may depend on the decline of
spontaneous yawns. Nevertheless, a recent
research (Giganti & Zilli, 2011) supports
the hypothesis that the two kinds of yawns,
spontaneous and contagious, are different and
controlled by different mechanisms.
Specifically, the former may he modulated by
physiological factors, whereas the latter by
social factors.
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- Furthermore, changes with age of the
contagious effect of yawning seems not to be due
to the decrease of the frequency of contagious
yawns per se, since no significant difference
were observed between young old and old-old
subjects in the frequency of yawns performed
while viewing other yawns. In addition, no
significant differences among the three age
groups were found in the frequency of yawns
performed viewing other smiles, leading to
exclude that the absence of the contagious
effect in the old-old subjects could he due to
an increase of yawns during the control
condition.
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- As previously reported it has been proposed
(Anderson & Meno, 2003) that, in children,
the occurrence of contagious yawning might
reflect both self-awareness and social
awareness. Furthermore, other studies (Platek,
Critton, Myers & Gallup, 2003; Schurmann et
al., 2005), suggested a link between contagious
yawning, empathy and social skills also for
adults.
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- Taking into account the above-mentioned
literature, the changes we discovered in the
response to other people's yawns during very old
age could reflect ToM difficulties which may
occur in old-old subjects. Indeed, Maylor and
colleagues (Maylor, Moulson, Muncer &
Taylor, 2002), while evaluating performance of
ToM ability grounded on understanding of ToM
stories, discovered age-related decline in
subjects over 75 years old. Nevertheless, an
important limitation of our study is that we did
not objectively test ToM performance in our
sample in order to verify an effective link
between contagious yawning andToM ability.
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- Many authors (Shamay-Tsoory &
AharonPeretz, 2007; Blair, 2005) stress that ToM
appears to be composed of different systems,
depending on separate anatomical substrates: a
cognitive and an affective one. The former
concerns the ability to understand cognitive
states, beliefs, thoughts, or intentions of
other people, namely a "cold" component, the
latter is a "hot" component and concerns the
ability to understand the affective states,
emotions or feelings of others (Duval et al.,
2010). It could be perceived that affective ToM
is similar to empathy, but, as Duval and
colleagues stressed. «the term "empathy"
refers solely to the feeling and experiencing of
another person's emotion, like a wave of felt
emotion, without necessarily understanding the
reason behind that feeling» (Duval et al.,
2010). Taking into account that the response to
others yawning is an automatic behaviour not
mediated by self-awareness, it could he
hypothesized that contagious yawning merely
represents an empathic response. Nevertheless
the timing of appearance in children at four to
five years of age (Anderson & Meno, 2003) as
well as the disappearance of the contagious
effect of yawning in old-old subjects leads to
the hypothesis that the propensity to be
affected by others' yawning is linked to ToM
abilities, rather than empathic activation,
which is developed very early in life (Hoffman,
1978). In addition, taking into account that
aniong ToM abilities, the cognitive component of
ToM, declines in very old age (Duval et al.,
2010), we suggest that the possibility to be
affected by others' yawning could be linked to
the cognitive component of ToM rather than the
affective one. Obviously, further investigation,
in the same subjects, on the contagious effect
of yawning and performance on cognitive ToM
tasks is needed to shed light on this
hypothesis.
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- Concluding remarks
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- The parallel developmental trend of
contagious effect of yawning and ToM abilities
across the life span, could give us some
suggestions about the fact that similar
mechanisms could be involved inToM cognitive
abilities like in contagious sensitivity to
yawning. Besides, we suggest that changes in the
response to other's people yawns during very old
age could reflect ToM difficulties, reported in
old-old subjects, mainly in the cognitive
component of ToM.
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Duval
C, Piolino P, Bejanin A, Eustache F, Desgranges
B. Age effects on different components of
theory of mind. Conscious Cogn.
2011;20(3):627-42.
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- Abstract
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- The effects of aging on the cognitive and
affective dimensions of theory of mind (ToM),
and on the latter's links with other cognitive
processes, such as information processing speed,
executive functions and episodic memory, are
still unclear. We therefore investigated these
effects in young (n=25), middle-aged (n=20) and
older adults (n=25), using separate subjective
and objective assessment tasks. Furthermore, a
novel composite task probed participants'
abilities to infer both cognitive and affective
mental states in an interpersonal context.
Although age affected the objective ToM tests,
results revealed a direct aging effect on the
second-order ToM, but an indirect one on the
first-order cognitive ToM, mediated mainly by
age-related declines in executive functions.
This study supports the notion of an age-related
distinction between subjective and objective
assessments of ToM, and confirms that ToM is a
complex mental ability with several
characteristics reliant to some extent on
executive processes.
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