It is well known, and scientifically documented, that yawning is contagious. Whe

Question

It is well known, and scientifically documented, that yawning is contagious. When we see some one else yawn, or even think about someone yawning, we are very likely to yawn ourselves. (In fact, we predict that you are starting to want to yawn right now.) In a study of yawning con- tagion, researchers showed participants one of several pictures, including a picture of a man yawning, the same man smiling, a yawning man with his mouth covered, or a yawning man with his eyes obscured (Provine et al. 1989). Participants yawned much more often when shown the yawner than the smiler, but surprisingly an identical number also yawned when shown the picture with the mouth obscured. This suggests that something besides the mouth is an important trigger. What about the eyes? Seventeen of 30 participants yawned when confronted with a picture of a yawning man, while 11 of 30 independent participants yawned when shown a picture of a yawning man with his eyes covered. Is there evidence in these data that covering the yawning man's eyes in an image changes the occurence of contagious yawns?

Explanation / Answer

Ans- (case 1) 17 of 30 participants yawned.
Probablity(p1) = 17/30= 0.57

(case 2) 11 of 30 independant participants yawned when shown a picture of a yawning man with eyes covered.

Probability(p2) = 11/30 = 0.36

// case 3(for test only) if we take all the participants then total 28 of 60 yawned.
// probabilty(p3) = 28/60 = 0.466

The difference in probability is = 0.57 - 0.36 = 0.21

Here X-squared = 0.50277,

Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

p-value = 0.3697

95 percent confidence interval:
0.5678118 4.2981906

Conclusion: The observed difference might suggest that yawning is contagious.
But The differences are small enough and biologically dependent

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