Blood oxytocin concentration positively predicts contagious yawning behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Kids with ASD who rarely catch yawns may be a biologically distinct group that needs empathy training before any hormone boost.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers drew blood from kids with autism and typical peers.
They watched who yawned after seeing someone else yawn.
The team asked: does natural oxytocin level predict the yawn response?
What they found
ASD kids with high blood oxytocin yawned just as much as typical kids.
ASD kids with low oxytocin almost never caught yawns.
Typical kids yawned back no matter their oxytocin level.
How this fits with other research
Bao et al. (2017) warned that oxytocin hype is ahead of solid data.
Their review said most trials use weak tests and short time frames.
Moerkerke et al. (2024) later gave four weeks of oxytocin spray and saw no brain change.
The new RCT seems to clash with Amaral et al. (2019), but it doesn’t.
G et al. measured natural hormone levels; Moerkerke added extra hormone.
The studies together hint that only kids who already make enough oxytocin show social brain readiness.
Giving more to low-oxytocin kids may not help unless we also teach the skill.
Why it matters
You can’t see blood oxytocin during a session, but you can watch who yawns.
No yawn after a peer yawns may flag a low-empathy subgroup.
Pair these kids with live models and extra reinforcement first.
Save oxytocin spray trials for later, after mastery teaching, not before.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Research suggests that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may have reduced empathy, as measured by an impaired contagious yawn response, compared to typically developing (TD) children. Other research has failed to replicate this finding, instead attributing this phenomenon to group differences in attention paid to yawn stimuli. A third possibility is that only a subgroup of children with ASD exhibits the impaired contagious yawn response, and that it can be identified biologically. Here we quantified blood concentrations of the "social" neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) and evaluated yawning behavior and attention rates during a laboratory task in children with ASD (N = 34) and TD children (N = 30) aged 6-12 years. No group difference in contagious yawning behavior was found. However, a blood OXT concentration × group (ASD vs. TD) interaction positively predicted contagious yawning behavior (F1,50 = 7.4987; P = 0.0085). Specifically, blood OXT concentration was positively related to contagious yawning behavior in children with ASD, but not in TD children. This finding was not due to delayed perception of yawn stimuli and was observed whether attention paid to test stimuli and clinical symptom severity were included in the analysis or not. These findings suggest that only a biologically defined subset of children with ASD exhibits reduced empathy, as measured by the impaired contagious yawn response, and that prior conflicting reports of this behavioral phenomenon may be attributable, at least in part, to variable mean OXT concentrations across different ASD study cohorts. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1156-1161. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: People with autism may contagiously yawn (i.e., yawn in response to another's yawn) less often than people without autism. We find that people with autism who have lower levels of blood oxytocin (OXT), a hormone involved in social behavior and empathy, show decreased contagious yawning, but those who have higher blood OXT levels do not differ in contagious yawning from controls. This suggests that decreased contagious yawning may only occur in a biologically defined subset of people with autism.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2019 · doi:10.1155/2013/971686