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mise à jour du
14 avril 2002
  The Psychological Record
1991, 41, 453-460
 cas cliniques
 Some antecedents and consequences of yawning
 Monica Greco Ronald Baenninger
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA
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It is commonly believed that yawning is caused by boredom, lack of oxygen, and seeing other persons yawn. Such an oddly disparate set of antecedent stimuli might seem to, make yawning a focus of interest for those who study biosocial aspects of behavior. But this has not been the case, and relatively few psychologists have studied yawning. As a result we are still uncertain about the precise circumstances under which these common beliefs about yawning are true (or not true). Provine, Tate, and Geldmacher (1987) found that changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels did not affect yawning frequency, whereas Provine and Hamernik (1986) found that concentration on boring stimuli, such as TV test patterns, did increase yawning frequency.

A comparably diverse set of neuroendocrine pathways has been found to regulate yawning. Neurotransmitters such as dopamine (Yamada, Nagashima, Kimura, Matsumoto, & Furukawa, 1990), acetylcholine (Cowan, 1978; Urba-Holmgren, Gonzalez, & Holmgren, 1977), and serotonin (Urba-Holmgren, Holmgren, & Gonzalez, 1979) have been implicated, as well as steroid hormones such as estrogen and testosterone (Phoenix & Chambers, 1982), oxytocin (Argiolas, Melis, Stancamp, & Gessa, 1990), and ACTH or adrenocorticotrophic hormone (Argiolas, Melis, & Gessa, 1988). Yawning has been found in all the major vertebrate classes, including several mammalian orders (e.g., primates, carnivores, and rodents), fish (Baenninger, 1987), birds (Dumpert, 1921), reptiles (Barthalmus & Zielinski, 1988), and amphibians (Cramer, 1924). Thus, the evolution and physiological correlates of yawning both present intriguing questions. In itself, the fact that so many apparent mechanisms are associated with yawning, in so many different species, suggests that the act is of some general importance.

In primates yawning may have evolved as a form of nonverbal communication. Deputte (cited by Redican, 1982) found that yawning was contagious among individual nonhuman primates of similar age and social status. He interpreted this contagion as an adaptive means for synchronizing activities (especially the sleep/waking cycles) of the individuals in a mobile troop of primates. One implication of this view is that troop leaders would likely initiate more yawning than subordinates, and Hadidian (1980) found that this was the case. Males also yawn more than females among nonhuman primates, although not in humans (Schino & Aureli, 1989). Dominant males may simply be making more threat displays that involve mouth opening, although Phoenix and Chambers (1982) found that testosterone injections increased yawning frequency by both male and female rhesus macaques. Sauer and Sauer (1967) proposed that yawning induces relaxation of social tension in groups. This would account for yawning contagion, but does not explain why nonsocial animals would yawn, or why social animals, such as humans, yawn when they are alone.

In humans yawning also has a social contagion aspect. Moore (1942) reported that people in college libraries and church services yawned in response to seeing a trained actor yawn. But Moore's observations were rather poorly controlled and have proved difficult to replicate within the confines of the laboratory. In our laboratory we have consistently failed to find contagion of yawning when human subjects are being openly observed; in one study an actor yawned during a reading delivered in person or via TV and there were virtually no yawns in response by 40 laboratory subjects (Baenninger, 1987).

In the studies reported here we have attempted to increase the frequency of solitary human yawning as a way of gaining stimulus control over the act; the relatively low baseline frequency of yawning is, of course, a stumbling block for research. In these studies we have also begun to examine some physiological correlates of yawning as a way of trying to understand what bodily functions it may serve. [......]

General Discussion

If yawning is a form of nonverbal communication among humans then its inhibition appears to be under voluntary (or quasi-voluntary) control. The consistent finding in these three studies was that people did not yawn when they believed that they were being observed by laboratory scientists/faculty. In Experiment 1 yawning occurred while subjects were reading about it, but only when the observer appeared to be a student who was not observing them; in Experiments 2 and 3 an apparently relaxing setting was not associated with increased yawning, presumably because subjects did not perceive it as relaxing. It is possible that subjects failed to yawn because they had no desire to communicate nonverbally with anyone, but it seems more likely that subjects were experiencing a certain amount of anxiety in the laboratory, either because they believed that their performance was somehow being observed and evaluated, or because they all subscribed to the social convention that yawning in public is impolite and is an act that should not be performed in the presence of authority figures. Such personal constraints increase the difficulty of performing objective studies of yawning, but we have recently found that self-reports by subjects are in close agreement with videotaped records, when the camera was hidden (Greco & Baenninger, 1989).

In these studies a reliable physiological correlate of spontaneous yawning was found, in the form of a drop in skin conductance immediately following yawns. When students were asked to produce yawns these nonspontaneous "faked" yawns were not reliably accompanied by this change. Changes in skin conductance are commonly used as one measure of sympathetic, or visceral, arousal level; the implication seems clear that yawning may thus affect this form of arousal. The possibility that this effect is a major function of most yawning acts is the working hypothesis of our ongoing research efforts.

voir aussi

Baenninger R, Binkley S, Baenninger M Field observations of yawning and activity in humans.
Baenninger R On yawning and its functions
Baenninger R, Greco M Some antecedents and consequences of yawning
Greco M, Baenninger R On the context of yawning: when, where, and why ?
Baenninger R Some comparative aspects of yawning in Betta sleepnes, Homo Sapiens, Pantera leo and Papio sphinx
Greco M , Baenninger R Effects of yawning and related actvities on skin conductance and heart rate
Is yawning an arousal defense reflex ? Askenasy JJ
 
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