Parenting Pointers: The Emergence of Humor

  

Young children’s ability to laugh and make jokes has been mapped by age for the first time using data from a new study involving nearly 700 children from birth to 4 years of age, from around the world. The findings, led by University of Bristol researchers and published in Behavior Research Methods, identifies the earliest age humour emerges and how it typically builds in the first years of life.

Researchers from Bristol’s School of Education sought to determine what types of humour are present in early development and the ages at which different types of humour emerge. The team created the 20-question Early Humour Survey (EHS) and asked the parents of 671 children aged 0 to 47 months from the UK, US, Australia, and Canada, to complete the five-minute survey about their child’s humour development.
The team found the earliest reported age that some children appreciated humour was 1 month, with an estimated 50% of children appreciating humour by 2 months, and 50% producing humour by 11 months. The team also show that once children produced humour, they produced it often, with half of children having joked in the last 3 hours.

Of the children surveyed, the team identified 21 different types of humour. Children under one year of age appreciated physical, visual and auditory forms of humour. This included hide and reveal games (e.g., peekaboo), tickling, funny faces, bodily humour (e.g., putting your head through your legs), funny voices and noises, chasing, and misusing objects (e.g., putting a cup on your head).

One-year-olds appreciated several types of humour that involved getting a reaction from others. This included teasing, showing hidden body parts (e.g., taking off clothes), scaring others, and taboo topics (e.g., toilet humour). They also found it funny to act like something else (e.g., an animal).

Two-year-olds’ humour reflected language development, including mislabelling, playing with concepts (e.g., dogs say moo), and nonsense words. Children in this age group were also found to demonstrate a mean streak as they appreciated making fun of others and aggressive humour (e.g., pushing someone).

Finally, 3-year-olds were found to play with social rules (e.g., saying naughty words to be funny), and showed the beginnings of understanding tricks and puns.

Dr Elena Hoicka, Associate Professor in Bristol’s School of Education and the study’s lead author, said: “Our results highlight that humour is a complex, developing process in the first four years of life. Given its universality and importance in so many aspects of children’s and adults’ lives, it is important that we develop tools to determine how humour first develops so that we can further understand not only the emergence of humour itself, but how humour may help young children function cognitively, socially, and in terms of mental health.

“The Early Humour Survey addresses an important gap of when different types of humour develop. It has the potential, with more research, to be used as a diagnostic tool in early development in terms of developmental differences, and to help inform early years educators and the UK’s national curriculum for 0-5 years.”

I had a chance to interview Dr. Hoicka to learn more. 

Why was this research conducted?

A: Up to this point, there hasn't been a clear taxonomy of the types of humour that children develop up to 4 years, and it also wasn't clear when different types of humour are first understood. We ran the Early Humor Survey to answer these questions. A further goal was to create a survey that we could use to compare to other surveys and lab measures to better understand how humour develops in general, for instance, in future we could use the Early Humor Survey alongside measures of language or motor development to see how important they are to humour development.

How can it be an advantage for adults to know how early children can understand humor?

A: The big advantage for adults, particularly parents, early years educators, and professionals working in children's media, is that it makes it easier to target different forms of humour towards children of different ages. So with our findings, a parent might try out mislabelling objects with their 2-year-old, and might discover they have new ways to joke with their child. For someone, for instance, writing a children's book, it might help them choose appropriate types of humour for their target age. Ultimately, parents, educators, etc. figure out what kids find funny on their own, but this could serve as a shortcut, and inspiration, for encouraging humour with kids.

What are some ways that parents and caregivers can develop kids' sense of humor?

A: My past research suggests that parents and caregivers tend to naturally give a lot of cues when they are joking, and children pick up on these cues to learn the jokes. For instance, parents often use Infant-Directed Speech (higher, louder, slower) when joking with their kids, and end joke sentences like a question, e.g., "The cows say quack?" They also show their disbelief after joking to highlight that it was a joke, and why, e.g., "Cows don't say quack! They really say moo!" Similarly, they will correct joke actions with correct ones to highlight the difference, for instance, after joking that a cup is a hat, they might show the correct action of drinking from a cup. Parents also smile and look at their children more when joking. While parents do all this naturally, I'm not sure they're aware they do this, and some parents might give these cues more than others. So for any parents who are unsure about how to joke with their kids, they could choose a type of humour that's appropriate for their child's age, or that they know their child already likes, and make sure they smile, make eye contact, and exaggerate their voices while delivering the joke, and then explain afterwards what made it a joke. In theory, this will make kids more likely to understand that their parents are joking, and what makes the jokes funny.

Paper
‘The Early Humor Survey (EHS): A Reliable Parent-Report Measure of Humor Development for 1- to 47-Month-Olds’ by E Hoicka et al in Behavior Research Methods.