Autistic Children Not Affected by Contagious Yawning

A few months ago, I was talking to a fellow patient about Asperger’s Syndrome. He asked whether Aspies are subject to contagious yawning. At the same time, my boyfriend and I always joke that we have empathy and are fake autistiics when we copy each other’s yawning – he copies mine far more often than I copy his. Now, it’s official: autistic children are not as likley to copy yawning as neurotypicals are. Of course, this further reinforces the empathy hypothesis of autism and provides insight into the social-communicative cues that we presumably miss. Yawn.