The Next Piece of Autism Puzzle: Yawning?

Sept. 15, 2010 -- Nicole Anthony understands the challenges of raising a child with autism. Her 13-year-old son, Miyka-El, has a milder form of the condition.

She said one of his biggest problems is responding to other people in social situations.

"Children with autism miss out on those social cues that other children will pick up on and pay attention to," she said.

Miyka-El has doesn't even do seemingly mundane things, like yawn in response to someone else yawning, which is something most people do unconsciously.

"Something like that won't affect him. He's in his own world, and if you're doing what he's not interested in doing, he's not going to pay attention," she said.

According to a small new study, Miyka-El Anthony isn't alone. A group of researchers found that children with autism were about half as likely as non-autistic children to mimic someone yawning.

The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Child Development, also found that children with a milder form of autism yawned in response to someone else yawning more often than children with more severe autism. Researchers also discovered that responding to contagious yawning happens significantly more often starting at age four.

Experts say these results add another piece of understanding to the autism puzzle. While they're unsure about whether these findings have any practical application, they agree that learning about autistic children's inability to respond to something as simple as a yawn says a lot about what the disorder really is.

"It's a great example of exactly how pervasive the challenges are that individuals on the autism spectrum have to face," said Susan Wilczynski, executive director of the National Autism Center in Randolph, Mass. "This deficit in social awareness is so severe that it affects something as minute and neurologically based as contagious yawning."

Lead researcher Molly Helt, a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, decided to focus on contagious yawning after discovering that her own autistic son didn't mimic her when she was trying to get him to yawn to unclog his ears while on a plane.