Empathy and contagious yawning..

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I found an interesting article

Link ---> Unpicking the autism puzzle by linking empathy and reward

It discusses different types of empathy - top-down empathy which involves working out what someone is thinking or feeling, and "bottom up" empathy, which is a more automatic response. The second, bottom-up empathy is apparently what causes fits of giggles and yawns to be contagious, which makes me wonder - do Aspies and people with autism "catch" yawns? And is there a difference between Aspies and Auties in this regard?

Personally, I think I have Asperger's ( AQ37 and "most likely and Aspie" on various tests), and I do catch yawns, but I'm interested to hear if this is the case with others.

My reaction to even the thread title...

Ahh.. the thread title made you yawn?

I nearly put that as an option in the poll.. unfortunately it's too late to edit it, but thanks for the response

I yawned from the thread title too.

For me it depends on who is doing the yawning (or giggling).

When my mother yawns, I start too. When my father yawns, I'm just slightly annoyed because he does these real loud and exaggerated sounding yawns.
When I fake yawns I almost always end up yawning for real.

I actually started yawning writing this... Seriously.

My son is diagnosed with Asperger's and he does not catch yawns. We've tried it out many times.

I am the opposite - I want to yawn right now just thinking about it!

Edited to add: I completed poll on my son's behalf.

-yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn-

Do I catch yawns?

Haha yeah... I yawned three times while reading this topic.. ^_^

I'm the yawning man, the yawning man.

Interesting topic. Maybe you could do a poll.

actualy believe not yawning is caused by the lack of mirror neurons in many of us with autism,and is not an empathy thing.

have personaly never yawned when other people do,seeing yawning doesnt mean anything to self.

Thanks for the responses so far everyone!

@ smudge.. there is a poll.. maybe it isn't showing in your browser for some reason?

Looking at the results so far, it seems that generally aspies do catch yawns. There's only two replies from people with autism so far - not enough to draw conclusions yet but both don't catch yawns.

I'd love to get more responses from auties to balance things out but I wonder if we could be on to some sort of scientific, measurable test here to distinguish the two?

@ KoR.. Interesting point on the mirror neurons. thanks

I catch yawns, but I didn't vote because the options slightly confused me. Probably because I use aspie and autistic interchangeable.

No, I don't catch yawns. My mother pointed it out to me. I can watch all the yawning videos on YouTube and I get nothing (animals and people).

It's an empathy thing -- social empathy based on nonverbal cues and the automatic recognition of such. A good portion of people with an ASD don't "catch" them. There's studies on it.

AS here.

For example:

(Wow, it's been a long time since my last post here)

Usually I don't yawn when others do, but I think the probability is higher if it is someone I know very well (closest family members).

I catch yawns when I read about yawning or look at pictures of people yawning, but not when other people around me yawn.

Yes, a lot of times I will "catch" yawns from other people around me yawning. Scrolling through this thread is making me yawn.