Response facilitation in the four great apes: is there a role for empathy?
Response facilitation in the four great apes: is there a role for empathy?
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DOI：
10.1007/s10329-013-0375-1
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发表时间：
2014-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.7
通讯作者：
Call, Josep
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Amici, Federica;Aureli, Filippo;Call, Josep
传染性哈欠是一种在人类和其他灵长类动物中发现的促进反应的形式，在这种情况下，观察打哈欠的模型会增加观察者也打哈欠的可能性。由于传染性哈欠似乎更容易在模特与观察者相似或与观察者有很强的社会纽带时被触发，因此有人提出传染性哈欠与同理心有关。检验这一假设的一种可能方法是，分析当观察到模特打哈欠或执行不同的非自愿(如擦鼻子、挠)和自愿(如握手、手腕颤抖)动作时，个体的反应是否不同。在这项研究中，我们测试了四个具有两种不同设置的类人猿物种，方法是将它们暴露在人类实验者反复在线执行这些动作的环境中，并在屏幕上反复执行这些动作的视频记录。我们研究了哪些行为受到反应促进的影响，反应促进是否由人类模型和视频记录的同种特异性共同触发，以及是否所有物种都显示出反应促进的证据。我们的结果显示，黑猩猩在观看同种动物(但不是人类)打哈欠的视频时和之后不久打的哈欠明显多于对照条件下的黑猩猩，而且它们这样做并不是对焦虑水平增加的反应。对于所有其他行为，没有任何物种在暴露于任何一种模式时比在控制条件下产生更多的目标动作。此外，那些在观看打哈欠视频时反应更快的人，在接触其他动作时也不会反应更多。因为，至少在黑猩猩身上，(1)受试者只有在打哈欠时才表现出反应便利，(2)只有在模型相同的情况下，传染性打哈欠似乎是由独特的机制触发的，可能与同理心有关。
Contagious yawning is a form of response facilitation found in humans and other primates in which observing a model yawning enhances the chance that the observer will also yawn. Because contagious yawning seems to be more easily triggered when models are conspecifics or have a strong social bond with the observer, it has been proposed that contagious yawning is linked to empathy. A possible way to test this hypothesis is to analyze whether individuals' responses differ when they observe models yawning or performing different involuntary (i.e., nose wiping, scratching) and voluntary (i.e., hand closing, wrist shaking) actions that are not linked to empathy. In this study, we tested the four great ape species with two different setups by exposing them to a human experimenter repeatedly performing these actions online, and video-recorded conspecifics repeatedly performing these actions on a screen. We examined which behaviors were subject to response facilitation, whether response facilitation was triggered by both human models and video-recorded conspecifics, and whether all species showed evidence of response facilitation. Our results showed that chimpanzees yawned significantly more when and shortly after watching videos of conspecifics (but not humans) yawning than in control conditions, and they did not do so as a response to increased levels of anxiety. For all other behaviors, no species produced more target actions when being exposed to either model than under control conditions. Moreover, the individuals that were more "reactive" when watching yawning videos were not more reactive when exposed to other actions. Since, at least in chimpanzees, (1) subjects only showed response facilitation when they were exposed to yawning and (2) only if models were conspecifics, it appears that contagious yawning is triggered by unique mechanisms and might be linked to empathy.