Yawning: Anthropology and Healthy Functional Person
Ryan Casey Anthropology in the News Contagious Yawning Contagious yawning is something you can’t control. Infants after 11 weeks after birth start yawning and study’s say that around the age of four, children start to develop “contagious yawning”. Doctors use this to see if the child has a disorder such as autism. What the doctors would do is see if the child response to someone else’s yawn. If the child does respond then they would know if the child’s brain is functioning right. This is a good way for doctors of even parents to pick up if there kid has something wrong.
The contagious yawning theory would be part of the social and cultural subfield of anthropology. Contagious yawning would represent social anthropology because it shows the way in which the body works and how it response to certain moves and actions that other people makes. Also, it would prove to be in the cultural subfield because it shows a pattern in the human body. Humans are not the only species that yawn. Study’s shown that all vertebrates yawn such as snakes and lizards. But only humans, chimpanzees and sometimes dogs had shown that they respond to other people yawning, known as contagious yawning.
People have been yawning for as long as humans have been around. This shows that yawing and contagious yawning is in the human culture, and a sign of social bonding. Contagious yawning would be more proven in human biology because it is a reaction of the body when the brain recognize someone else yawn, it sets off a trigger in your brain that makes someone looking at someone yawning also yawn. Anthropology provides vital knowledge and information in this case of contagious yawning.
This is shown in the story when they mention how the body develops overtime and when young infants at an early age of four show signs of contagious yawning. Also, it tells us how some primates and all vertebrates also devolve the theory contagious yawning. Contagious yawning is a shown is something that a healthy functional person cannot control. It is shown in the social and cultural subfields of anthropology and shows facts to support human culture, human biology and human history. Anthropology provides facts and knowledge about contagious yawning.
