2018 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Non-verbal communication through yawning: a cross-cultural comparison
Publicly Offered Research
| Project Area | Construction of the Face-Body studies in transcultural conditions |
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| Project/Area Number |
18H04180
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
Tseng Chiahuei 東北大学, 電気通信研究所, 准教授 (00793811)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2020-03-31
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| Keywords | Yawning / Emotional Expression / Cultural Differences |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
There are two research questions we address in this proposed study: (1) Is yawning expression the same as other non-verbal communicative cues (e.g. facial emotions)? (2) Is there any cultural differences in our yawning perception? Our progress in both directions include (1) We have created two databases, one with real human faces and the other with computer graphic generated faces to generate yawning and other emotional expressions in standardized intensity levels. This allows us to directly first research question. (2) We have conducted psychophysical detection tests in both Japan and Hong Kong which revealed qualitative differences in participants’ rating and judgements. We are now including eye-tracking methods to further delineate the sources of these differences.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We have established testing paradigms and stimuli and conducted pilot results. We also trained research students who now are qualified and competent to carry out the full data collection. We hope to have sufficient results for submission to international conferences this year, and be ready for journal publication in the near future.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Our primary goals in this year are two-folds:
(1)We will extend our behavioral observations to electro-physiological recordings in this year. We plan to use EEG to record participants’ brain activities during yawning perception to examine whether the activation in social cognition areas and in visual perception areas correlate with their behavioral patterns.
(2)We will complete the cross-culture studies to further clarify whether yawning expression shares similar mechanisms as in other facial expressions with eye-tracking methods and perceptual tools.
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