A question I've been finding a good answer to. I've heard yawning contagious but I can't quite explain why two sometimes three people start yawning at the same second.
I decided to post this here because the same thing happened this morningg when I was seated with family members and not the first time of occurring.
Any NLer in the house with the same encounter?

Its kind of an unconscious display of Empathy.empathy is the ability to connect with and understand others' emotional states..we actually learn it without knowing

to comment

ameer!:
to comment

me too, 3rd to comment


na people wey get the same evil spirit. just their own way of transfering it.

its a coincidence, no much coments, pls next tym cme out wit smetin more interestd

it is just an unconcious mirroring,in humans.*wack thread by the way*

its a coincidence, no much coments, pls next tym cme out wit smetin more interested

Rightly said it is a form of empathy

meforkene: Its kind of an unconscious display of Empathy.empathy is the ability to connect with and understand others' emotional states..we actually learn it without knowing

I have asked myself this question so many times but could not get answer to it. I observed that sometimes that I yawn, people around also did the same at the same time.

Do they ?

Justicemy: its a coincidence, no much coments, pls next tym cme out wit smetin more interested

Jesus see ENGLISH. INTRESTED. More like, dis film is so intrested.

damn this thread is worthless
why is this on front page

Where there is no man to yawn wt u at the same time,if there is a goat around watch it, it yawns too

It happens to me every now and then.though i'm always surprise cuz I dont know the reason behind it.

uihebom: Jesus see ENGLISH. INTRESTED. More like, dis film is so intrested.

english teacher yet u failed the spelling of interest.

Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the
pressure on your eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other people's ear pressures, so they must yawn to even it out.

[color=soyouquotedme]This thread is highly contagious.
People yawn when they are bored. Honestly this thread is boring, Everyone deserve to yawn [/color]

[img]http://1.bp..com/-hkmGzJ0SPeQ/TunibIOPO_I/AAAAAAAAABI/xr-gLJ7z6lg/s400/Yawns-Are-Contagious-770.jpg[/img]

rcb34: Where there is no man to yawn wt u at the same time,if there is a goat around watch it, it yawns too

Product of a failed educational system.Goats dont yawn,they bleat !

Digriz: english teacher yet u failed the spelling of interest.

thumbs up

some topic wey make sense no dey alwys enter front page.
.....na mumu topic u go dey see sometimes!!!!!
............na wa ooo

Very soon somebody go ask:

why do people sleep?

E go still enter frontpage


Just passing!!!!!!!

[size=14pt] #NowYawning While Reading This Thread [/size]

**yawns**

just asK GOogLe . . .

,,nxt pLs

60% of people that read this post will yawn.
It is not only contagious but a psychological response.

geeez: I wonder why someone had to create a thread for this when he could have easily googled it up. I used google the first time I asked myself the question too

You can get answers to most questions on nairaland my friend. I only did that to get different reactions from folks here, that's why it is called FORUM.
Mr ITK

Watch someone yawn, and try not to yawn yourself. It can be impossible to resist. Even reading about yawning can make you do it.
Now, a new study offers insight into why contagious yawning is such a powerful force.
Yawning when others yawn, the study suggests, is a sign of empathy and a form of social bonding. Kids don't develop this deeplyrooted behavior until around age four, the study found. Kids with autism are half as likely to catch yawns. In the most severe cases, they never do.
Yawning might eventually help doctors diagnose developmental disorders. The work could also lead to a better understanding of the subtle ways that people communicate and connect.
"Emotional contagion seems to be a primal instinct that binds us together," said Molly Helt, a graduate student in clinical psychologyat the University of Connecticut, Storrs."Yawning may be part of that."
Inspiration for her study came when she tried to get her own autistic son to clear his ears on an airplane. She repeatedly yawned at him, hoping he would yawn back. He neverdid.
"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," she said.
"The big thing people try to figure out in infant development is how we become humans who understand that humans have minds that are different from ours," she added. "Autistic people never sort of seem to understand that."
Fetuses begin yawning in the womb as early as 11 weeks after conception, said Robert Provine, a developmental neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
For reasons scientists still can't explain, spontaneous yawning continues throughout life. (Studies have shot down theories about yawning to bring in more oxygen.) In fact, all vertebrates yawn, including snakes and lizards.
Contagious yawning is a different story. Only humans, chimpanzees and possibly dogs have been shown to do it.
Like contagious laughter and contagious crying, scientists have theorized that contagious yawning is a shared experience that promotes social bonding. Specifically, Helt said, it could diffuse stress after a period of being on high alert and spread a feeling ofcalm through a group.
To find out when in life the behavior develops, Helt read a story to 120 healthy kids, ages one through six. The kids were grouped by age, so that all of the one-year-olds heard one reading, all the two-year-olds heard another, and so on. There were 20 kids in each age group.
During each 10-minute story, Helt intentionally yawned every 90 seconds. A camera recorded whether the kids were watching her and if so, whether they yawned, too. She and colleagues repeated theexperiment with 28 autistic kids, ages 6 to 15. Some of the children were further along the autistic spectrum than others.
Given four opportunities to catch a yawn, the researchers report today in the journal Child Development , none of the healthy one-year-olds did. Only one of the two-year-olds yawned back, and two of the three-year-olds caught a yawn.
There was a dramatic leap in the group of four-year-olds, where yawning spread to 9 out of 20 kids. That rate held steady for the older groups.
And it matches experiments in grown-ups, which find that between 40 and 60 percent of healthy adults yawn after seeing someone yawn, thinking about yawning or even reading the word "yawn."
In the second part of the study, Helt and colleagues found that contagious yawning happened half as often in kids with a mild versions of autism. Kids with the most severe diagnoses never caught yawns.
Besides offering potential for diagnosing andunderstanding autism, the new work gives overdue attention to a fundamental and unconscious behavior that the field of psychology has long ignored, Provine said. Hestudies a cluster of contagious behaviors, including emotional tears, and has written a book about laughter.
"Yawning is a really big deal," Provine said."We're dealing with something ancient, deep,and at the very root of our being. And psychologists have basically ignored it."
"It's a primal social bonding process," he added. "We're looking at the roots of empathy.
http://news.discovery.com/human/yawning-social-behavior.html

Seun time to sack some moderators!!!!!!!!!