Catching Yawns: Why Yawning Is Contagious You see someone near you yawn and you think that

he must have gone past his bedtime last night. Suddenly, you feel the urge to yawn and its impossible to resist. You did not just catch his sleepiness, did you? Yawning is not just the bodys manifestation of sleep deprivation. While scientists cannot directly point out the cause of the yawning contagion, different theories have been established to explain this phenomenon. Scientists from University of Albany in New York believe that yawn is a mechanism that evolved from an ancient activity, where people yawn to keep them connected as well as alert. "We think contagious yawning is triggered by empathic mechanisms which function to maintain group vigilance," said Dr. Gordon Gallup, one of the researchers who made the study in 2007. Another theory says that yawning is a result of a herding behavior, which the same with birds taking flight at the same time, fishes swimming together in an unplanned direction and the like. It was also suggested that early humans used yawning to indicate their alertness and to coordinate their sleeping times. In those times, someone would yawn to tell his companions that they needed to sleep and his companions would agree by yawning back. Based on a study by Molly Helt, a clinical psychology expert from University of Connecticut, Storrs, yawning is a part of our emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is also responsible for our crying or laughing when we see others do it, sometimes even without any apparent reason. Helts study also revealed that people with autism find it hard to yawn after sensing someone do so. She was inspired to do this research when she asked her own autistic son to relieve the pressure on his ears while in a flight by yawning. She yawned repeatedly to him but he didnt yawn back. "The fact that autistic kids don't do it might mean they're really missing out on that unconscious emotional linkage to those around them," said Helt. While humans yawned even before birth (yes, you have yawned in your mothers womb), it is only until 4 years old when we start catching yawns. This was evident on an experiment done by Helt for the same study. In this experiment, Helt yawned every 90 seconds while reading stories to healthy kids aged 1-6 years. The children were grouped according to age, and the responses to yawning of each group were recorded in a camera. The increase of the number of children who yawned back was dramatic at the 4year-old group. Reading about yawns or the word yawn also makes you yawn. It is no surprise if you have yawned while reading this article. But if you havent at this point, dont worry. Only 55% of the human population find yawning contagious and will yawn within five minutes after sensing a stimulus that makes them yawn (aside from drowse). So no, youre not medically aberrant. So the next time you catch somebody elses yawn, you know that youre participating in a social bonding process and not copying his feeling sleepy.