Yawning Not Contagious for Children with Autism
Yawning Not Contagious for Children with Autism
Watch someone yawn, and try not to yawn yourself. It can be almost impossible to resist. But why is yawing so contagious? When someone yawns, you are most likely going to yawn within five minutes. You can be affected by yawning not only by watching someone yawn, but by reading and hearing it, too. A recent study shows that contagious yawning can be part of the “neural network involved in empathy.”
Not everyone one is contagious though. New studies show that children with autism are not affected by yawning. Children with autism miss facial expressions that contribute to the spread of the yawn itself. They miss those facial cues because they try not to look directly at another person’s face.
To check to see if the scientist’s hypotheses were supported, they conducted two experiments. The first test consisted of 26 children diagnosed with autism, as well as a control of 46 children without the disorder. Both groups of children wore an eye-tracking device which could determine if the children were looking into the yawning person’s eyes during a movie clip.
The second test consisted of only 22 children with autism, and 29 without autism. Instead of counting how many people had glasses on, they took count in how many people had beards.
The studies showed that lack of empathy is not to blame for the disordered children, but their lack of catching facial expressions. When the children were told to look at the faces in the videos, they acted no different than to those without autism.
In conclusion, the researcher’s hypothesis, “If the children with autism look at facial cues of someone yawning, then they will act equivalent to those without autism.” was supported by their data. The controls were the children without autism, and the independent variable was the children with autism. The constants were the videos, and the eye-tracking devices.
I felt that this was a very interesting experiment. To be
Watch someone yawn, and try not to yawn yourself. It can be almost impossible to resist. But why is yawing so contagious? When someone yawns, you are most likely going to yawn within five minutes. You can be affected by yawning not only by watching someone yawn, but by reading and hearing it, too. A recent study shows that contagious yawning can be part of the “neural network involved in empathy.”
Not everyone one is contagious though. New studies show that children with autism are not affected by yawning. Children with autism miss facial expressions that contribute to the spread of the yawn itself. They miss those facial cues because they try not to look directly at another person’s face.
To check to see if the scientist’s hypotheses were supported, they conducted two experiments. The first test consisted of 26 children diagnosed with autism, as well as a control of 46 children without the disorder. Both groups of children wore an eye-tracking device which could determine if the children were looking into the yawning person’s eyes during a movie clip.
The second test consisted of only 22 children with autism, and 29 without autism. Instead of counting how many people had glasses on, they took count in how many people had beards.
The studies showed that lack of empathy is not to blame for the disordered children, but their lack of catching facial expressions. When the children were told to look at the faces in the videos, they acted no different than to those without autism.
In conclusion, the researcher’s hypothesis, “If the children with autism look at facial cues of someone yawning, then they will act equivalent to those without autism.” was supported by their data. The controls were the children without autism, and the independent variable was the children with autism. The constants were the videos, and the eye-tracking devices.
I felt that this was a very interesting experiment. To be