Contagious and spontaneous yawning in autistic and typically developing children

Abstract

Previous studies have reported the absence of a contagious effect when autistic children view another’s yawning. This result could be due to the difficulty of autistic children in establishing reciprocal gaze behaviour with human partners. Furthermore, the presence of a contagious effect in autistic children could change according their degree of functioning. We evaluated the contagious effect of yawning in both autistic children with different degrees of functioning and in typically developing children exposed to the viewing and hearing of others yawn. Furthermore the frequency and the daily distribution of spontaneous yawning were evaluated and compared among three groups. Autism Spectrum Disorder can selectively affect some behaviour. In autistic children the contagious effect of yawning is largely impaired, whereas the spontaneous production and daily distribution are not. These results support the hypothesis of a link between contagious yawning and social abilities and the existence of different processes underlying spontaneous and contagious yawning.