Autistic children don’t catch yawning
The British Psychological Society blog is reporting on research showing that autistic children are “immune” to contagious yawning:
Footage of the children taken while they were watching the videos showed, as expected, that the non-autistic children yawned more during and after seeing a video of a person yawning, than after watching a control video. By contrast, the children with autism yawned no more after seeing a yawn video than after a control video – they appeared to be immune to the contagious effects of yawning. This remained true even after the researchers controlled for the effects of age and intelligence.
Posted on 
September 7th, 2007 by 
Simon Greenhill
2 Responses to “Autistic children don’t catch yawning”
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Email Henry Updates to Me
September 24th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I just listened to an NPR story on “catching a yawn”, where the reporter suggested that yawning is a way for humans to connect with others. I then wondered if studies had been done with children with autism regarding this phenomenon, and found this website.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Glad I could help, Steve!