Contagious yawning comes at a later age

I am so sleep deprived, I can't even think about yawning without yawning. This story is literally making me yawn! I have never noticed if my three-year-old or one-year-old have contagious yawns. I am going to keep an eye on that though-interesting!

FROM NBC: A new study finds that young children and autistic kids may have different yawning habits than the rest of us! About half of us yawn when we see someone else do it -- it's called contagious yawning. Researchers at the University of Connecticut discovered that while young children yawn from birth, they rarely have contagious yawns before the age of four.

They also found children with autism are less likely to yawn contagiously than their peers, especially kids higher on the autism spectrum. Researchers say contagious yawning may be a form of empathy -- an emotion that takes children years to develop -- and that autistic children often lack this type of connection with others.

-NewsAnchorMom Jen

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