Developing a Questionnaire to Measure Social, Tickle, and Contagious Yawning Behavior in Normally Developing Children and Children with Autism
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Date
2008-10-19
Type of Work
Department
Psychology
Program
Psychology
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This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu.
Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan through a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan through a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
Abstract
Tickle and contagious yawning are predictable behavior affected by social cues and context. Tickle and contagious yawning may be performed abnormally by children with autism or other special needs because they express a variety of social behavior abnormalities. The goal of this study was to develop a questionnaire that can be used to gather descriptive data about tickle and contagious yawning in normally developing children and children with autism or other special needs with the intent of identifying future areas of research in diagnosis and intervention. DeVellis's (2003) principles for scale construction were combined with Dillman's (2000) guidelines for questionnaire construction to guide the questionnaire development process. The questionnaire had low return rates and tickle and contagious yawning items did not form internally consistent scales. Despite these limitations, the questionnaire shows promise for use as a qualitative instrument.