When we think of the word ‘‘contagious,’’ we often think of something negative, like the flu. But transmitted diseases aren’t the only thing that can quickly spread within a society—certain feelings, emotions, and behaviors can be easier to catch than the common cold. Does seeing others laugh or yawn make you want to do it too? You’re definitely not alone—‘‘behavioral contagion,’’ or the tenden...

Human empathy can extend to strangers and even other species, but it is unknown whether non-humans are similarly broad in their empathic responses. We explored the breadth and flexibility of empathy in chimpanzees, a close relative of humans. We used contagious yawning to measure involuntary empathy and showed chimpanzees videos of familiar humans, unfamiliar humans and gelada baboons (an unfam...

The ultimate function of yawning continues to be debated. Here, we examine physiological measurements taken before, during, and after yawns in humans, in an attempt to identify key proximate mechanisms associated with this behavior. In two separate studies we measured changes in heart rate, lung volume, eye closure, skin conductance, ear pulse, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and respiratory rate...

Cortisol is essential to the regulation of the immune system and yawning is a pathological symptom of multiple sclerosis (MS). Electromyography activity (EMG) in the jaw muscles typically rises when the muscles are moved and with yawning is highly correlated with cortisol levels in healthy people. Saliva samples from 59 participants were collected at the start and after yawning, or at the end o...

False memory paradigms can offer leverage on understanding the breakdowns in episodic memory that occur with healthy aging (see Balota, Cortese, et al., 1999; Budson, Daffner, Desikan, & Schacter, 2000; Kensinger & Schacter, 1999; Norman & Schacter, 1997; Tun, Wingfield, Rosen, & Blanchard, 1998; Watson, Balota, & SergentMarshall, 2001). In general, studies have demonstrated that relative to yo...

People empathize with fictional displays of behaviour, including those of cartoons and computer animations, even though the stimuli are obviously artificial. However, the extent to which other animals also may respond empathetically to animations has yet to be determined. Animations provide a potentially useful tool for exploring non-human behaviour, cognition and empathy because computer-gener...

The advance of computing technology has provided the means for building intelligent vehicle systems. Drowsy driver detection system is one of the potential applications of intelligent vehicle systems. Previous approaches to drowsiness detection primarily make pre-assumptions about the relevant behavior, focusing on blink rate, eye closure, and yawning. Here we employ machine learning to datamin...

A retired man in his 60s had been well until De-cember 1998 when he had let out a sudden involuntary cry and then a yawn, and for a few seconds found that his speech was quiet and breathy. Over the following 8 weeks he developed slurring of speech and swallowing diffi culties with regurgitation. He noticed generalized weakness and fatigue, with symptoms fl uctuating from week to week. By March ...

Several approaches were proposed for the detection and prediction of drowsiness. The approaches can be categorized as estimating the fitness of duty, modeling the sleep-wake rhythms, measuring the vehicle based performance and online operator monitoring. Computer vision based online operator monitoring approach has become prominent due to its predictive ability of detecting drowsiness. Previous...

The question is whether “Board Testing has become stagnant” as an ITC topic. The implication is that the board test community has nothing new to invent, report or say that would be of use to the ITC community at large, and board test engineers in particular. This leads to the charge that ITC is really only an IC testing conference. While I must accept the fact that the IC content of ITC is much...