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“Let Me Show You a Trick!”: A Toddler's Use of Humor To Explore, Interpret, and Negotiate Her Familial Environment During a Day in the Life
Abstract
Children employ different types of humor as they explore, interpret, and negotiate their environments. Whereas an appreciation of verbal incongruity has been a hallmark of older preschooler humor (e.g., McGhee, 1989), more recently, other violations of expectations and clowning also have been identified as ubiquitous during the first two years of life (e.g., Loizou, 2005; Reddy, 2001). We examined the pragmatics of one 30-month-old girl's humor, and determined how it interactively harnessed the cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional resources available to her negotiations within her familial context. Using the methodology of a Day in the Life of a toddler in early childhood (Gillen et al., 2006), the child's entire waking day was videotaped, and all interactions were transcribed and analyzed. We identified many instances of humor, and categorized them into four major types: clowning, teasing, jokes and playful language, and physical actions. Humor served both socio-emotional and cognitive-linguistic functions, and we confirmed Reddy's (2001) finding that early humor is interpersonally co-constructed: When humor operates within the child's inter-mental development zone (Mercer, 2000), it serves to inform her or his intra-mental growth; the inter-mental precedes and enables the intra-mental.
... As children develop they realize that humor has meaning and they often remember riddles and jokes using them as a means of initiating social interactions with peers and adults (McGhee, 1984;2002). Children's humor has two functions, social -emotional and cognitive -linguistic (Cameron et al., 2008;2010). When it comes to verbal humor, understanding of jokes and irony, occurs after the age of four years. ...
... Therefore, the development of humor is associated with social, emotional and cognitive components, as well as language skills (Goel & Dolan, 2001;Cameron et al., 2008;Semrud -Clikeman & Glass, 2010). ...
... On the other hand, self-defeating humor style has been associated with increased anxiety and depressive tendencies, while aggressive style achieves a negative correlation with well-being (Saraglou & Scariot, 2002;Kuiper et al, 2004;Johnson & McCord, 2010). Based on a series of studies conducted in the field of adult humor (Lefcourt, 2001;Saraglou & Scariot, 2002;Martin et al., 2003;Kazarian & Martin, 2004;Kuiper et al, 2004;Bilge & Saltuk, 2007;Johnson & McCord, 2010;Vukobrat, 2013), but also with children (McGhee, 1979;1984;2002;Demorest et al., 2001, according to Cameron et al., 2010Klein & Kuiper, 2006;Erickson & Feldstein, 2007;Cameron et al. 2008;2010;Masten 1986, according to Semrud -Clikeman & Glass, 2010 it is reasonably assumed that there is a relationship between personality traits and humor styles. This work used the popular five-factor personality model as a theoretical basis. ...
Studies in the field of humor have become more and more popular in this region. The best known humor styles classification was made by Martin, who differentiates affiliative, aggressive, self-enhancing and self-defeating humor styles (Martin et al., 2003). Regarding the personality traits, our research was based on the five factor model that includes five dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness (John & Srivastava, 1999). The aim of the present study was to investigate humor styles and their connection with personality traits. The sample was appropriate, consisting of the pupils from the participants were divided in two age groups: primary school pupils from 11 to 12 years old (276 participants) and high school pupils from 16 to 17 years old. The instruments used in this study were HSQ – C (Humor Styles Questionnaire for Children), HSQ (Humor Styles Questionnaire), BFQ (Big Five Questionnaire for Children) and BFI (Big Five Inventory). The statistical analysis was based on the Pearson correlation coefficient, Mann Whitney – U test and simple regression. The results confirmed the hypothesis that personality traits predict humor styles. Additionally, qualitative differences between age groups were found regarding the relationship between personality traits and humor styles.
... 4 In Piagetian theory (Piaget, 1945), when a child perceives information that does not fit with her/his existing schema about a particular object or event, s/he experiences incongruity. To make sense of this incongruous information, the child normally either reinterprets the perceived information to make it fit with the existing schema (assimilation), or modifies the schema so that it can incorporate the new information 3 In the current work, while embracing the importance of incongruity as a characterizing notion associated with laughter, we will take an agnostic stance with respect to theories about humour/funniness (but see Canal et al. (2019) for a proposal about the sequential cognitive processing of humour). We focus mainly on laughter itself and on describing its (semantico-pragmatic) constituents in detail. ...
... Walker (2013) interprets laughter produced after a transgression as a way to invite a display of affiliation from the mother (e.g., an invitation to reciprocate the laughter) which can be accepted or declined. Cameron et al. (2008) conducted a microanalytic study observing one girl of 30 months during a full day. They observed how humour served both socio-emotional and cognitive-linguistic functions: i.e., making affective connections (to create connection and effort in affecting others by her actions), negotiating social situations to hedge against disapproval (accompanied by "that was a joke!"), testing the environment, and learning meanings of concepts and words. ...
... Desde luego, la visión de McGhee (1971a) ha sido revaluada. Es evidente que los niños hacia los 12 meses logran producir situaciones de humor basadas en el engaño (Cameron, Kennedy & Cameron, 2008;Newton, Reddy & Bull, 2000;Reddy, 2004;Reddy, 2007). También se sabe que los niños de 2 a 3 años ya comprenden el humor grafico a partir de la comprensión de la incongruencia, la exageración o una visión mentalista (Puche-Navarro, 2004, 2009. ...
... También se sabe que los niños de 2 a 3 años ya comprenden el humor grafico a partir de la comprensión de la incongruencia, la exageración o una visión mentalista (Puche-Navarro, 2004, 2009. Los niños producen cierto tipo de humor que implica transgredir lo acordado o burlarse de otros (Cameron, Kennedy & Cameron, 2008;Loizou, 2005Loizou, , 2007Newton et al., 2000). ...
El objetivo de este estudio fue identificar las fases de desarrollo por las que transitan los niños en el proceso de comprensión del humor. Se utilizaron bromas basadas en tres retos cognitivos (a) la incongruencia, (b) la transgresión y (c) el engaño. La muestra estuvo constituida por 25 niños entre los 36-49 meses (15 niños y 10 niñas). Los resultados mostraron cómo el desarrollo de la comprensión del humor, en los niños de 3 años, pasa por tres fases. (1) La identificación de elementos incongruentes, (2) la comprensión de los efectos de las acciones (transgresión) y (3) la comprensión de la desinformación basada en la comprensión de los estados mentales de los otros.
... As she grew up, Kelly's cognitive abilities improved more complex, enabling her to create a variety of jokes. Other case studies obtained similar findings (Cameron et al., 2008;Johnson & Mervis, 1997). Based on such case studies exploring a close relationship between language development and humour, joking plays an important role in the development of pragmatics (Hoicka, 2014). ...
... Other studies share similar outcomes which support the two theories. Specifically, Cameron, Kennedy, and Cameron (2008) explored the humorous production of a toddler and highlight among other types of humor: teasing, playful language and physical actions. Examples of humorous episodes shared involve toilet humor as in the case of turning the 'mini cooper' into a 'mini pooper' or when the child purposefully recites the 'pledge of Allegiance' to her mother even though she knew her mother disagreed with it, thus purposefully violating social norms. ...
ABSTRACT
The aim of the study was to explore the ways in which a Series of
Creative Structured Activities (SCSA) involving humor elements,
affected the type and quantity of visual and verbal productions of
two preschoolers. Researchers agree on the incongruity element of
humor (Theory of the Absurd) and violation of expectations
(Empowerment Theory). Also, creativity in relation to humor was
examined through fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration
(Torrance test). Data collection included children’s humorous drawings and stories, before and after participating in a SCSA and were
analysed based on the two theories and the creativity elements.
The SCSA affected positively the quantity and originality of humorous events produced by the two children in their drawings and
stories. We highlight that the use of a SCSA provides a safe space for
children to explore new ideas playfully and creatively; unfold their
humorous self and scaffold their creative thinking.
... Children in preschool, specifically ages 3-5 years, begin to exhibit a number of fascinating playful verbal skills in the midst of rapid language and social developments. In home observations, research has shown that children as young as 2-3 years can mimic and produce their own forms of joking or word play (Cameron et al., 2008). Three-to five-year-olds in our target age range have been observed to produce novel jokes (e.g. ...
This study examined the relationship between four common types of language play and their correlations with the verbal and social abilities of 3- to 5-year-old children. While observation has shown that children this age produce a range of play, research has not yet examined whether play is a measurable skill connected to preschoolers’ language development. In this study, we designed four language play elicitation games involving creating rhymes, word switching, word creation, and hyperbolic play. Children’s ability to produce novel play for each game was measured, and classroom teachers filled out assessments of children’s verbal and peer interaction skills. Results indicated that while children’s peer interaction scores were not related to their play scores, verbal skills scores were highly correlated with language play scores, highlighting that for preschoolers the ability to produce common types of language play may be a distinctly verbal skill.
... Reddy (2008) argues that children acquire humorous forms of communication simultaneously with serious forms. Moreover, children may use humorous over serious conversation in order to negotiate more freely with others, secure greater indulgence from adults, and empower themselves by violating rules established in their environment (Cameron et al. 2008;Loizou 2005). If we consider humour to be a modality of communication, it is possible to see continuity between early forms of humour and the use of irony that was examined in the previous section (Airenti 2016). ...
In this chapter, the development of pragmatic abilities in children is described. Pragmatic abilities are a multifaceted skill. It is argued that using and interpreting language in communication is a demanding task that requires inference abilities and relies on different forms of knowledge. Very often, in everyday use of language, the pragmatic meaning of an utterance is not what is literally said. Consequently, interpreting an utterance requires going beyond what is said in order to identify the speaker’s communicative intentions. This kind of interpretation requires an inferential process based on contextual knowledge or a common ground that interlocutors are supposed to share. Children begin to participate in communicative interactions very early in life, although full pragmatic development is only achieved throughout the school years. It is described how children at different stages of development deal with aspects of implied meaning in communication.
... Children are involved in humorous communicative interactions from a very young age (Groch, 1974;Bainum et al., 1984;Dubois et al., 1984;Bergen, 1989;Reddy, 1991Reddy, , 2008Loizou, 2005;Cameron et al., 2008;Hoicka and Akhtar, 2012;Mireault et al., 2012). From a developmental perspective, the earliest cases of humorous interactions are amusing situations that occur between infants and adults. ...
In the developmental literature, the idea has been proposed that young children do not understand the specificity of non-literal communicative acts. In this article, I focus on young children’s ability to produce and understand different forms of humor. I explore the acquisition of the communicative contexts that enable children to engage in humorous interactions before they possess the capacity to analyze them in the terms afforded by a full-fledged theory of mind. I suggest that different forms of humor share several basic features and that we can construct a continuum from simple to sophisticated forms. In particular, I focus on teasing, a form of humor already present in preverbal infants that is also considered a typical feature of irony. I argue that all forms of humor can be regarded as a type of interaction that I propose to call “playing with expectations.”
... Apter's theory is consistent with many other researchers in highlighting the aggressive and disparaging nature of humor. We have previously reported, by way of contrast, but in accord with Socha and Kelly (1994), that the very young children we have studied did not use aggressive or disparaging humor (e.g., E. L. Cameron, Kennedy, & C. A. Cameron, 2008;E. L. Cameron, Accorti Gamannossi, Gillen, & C. A. Cameron, 2010), and here we extend this finding to resilient youth in conversation with friends and family. ...
This paper explores the types of verbal irony employed by resilient youth in spontaneous conversation and examines how they use this irony to navigate potentially challenging psychosocial terrain. We documented and analyzed instances of irony in the spontaneous speech of adolescent participants in an international, ecological study of resilience using quasi-naturalistic and participatory visual methods. We found irony to be co-constructively utilized by the youths we studied. They spontaneously used many types of irony to mute criticism and avoid embarrassment. These resilient youth, who were thriving under adverse circumstances, used irony in a positive way to facilitate affiliation with their friends and family.
... The false-belief test demonstrates that children are capable of predicting others' actions based on knowledge that they are privy to that others are not-that is, attributing behaviors to other individuals based on interpreting the knowledge base others have access to, not what the 4-year-olds themselves know (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Young children can also differentiate what different family members find funny, taking their cues from the social environment (Cameron, Kennedy, & Cameron, 2008). ...
Humor can be a powerful therapeutic tool in clinical social work: It creates a layer of connection between clinician and client, can strengthen the therapeutic bond and provides a gateway to change on cognitive, emotional, and biological levels. It can help restore a sense of playfulness, lightness, and fun—innate qualities often lost as a result of adverse early experiences, including insecure attachment and trauma. The first paper of this two-paper theoretical dissertation reviews facets of humor development as an integrated social, cognitive, and emotional system that starts in infancy, with the objective of providing clinicians with a theoretical basis for integrating humor into therapy. Humor is examined through the play system as a component of attachment theory, mentalization, and the cognitive/emotional appreciation of incongruities. Theory is linked to practice through clinical vignettes. The second paper focuses more deeply on the clinical application of humor in clinical social work and the ways in which humor can be utilized by clinicians as a therapeutic tool. It addresses therapists’ use of self, categories of humor, the importance of increasing mentalization skills to heighten awareness and timing in humorous interjections, the broaden and build theory of positive emotions, recent studies correlating humor, well-being and resiliency, and caveats about using humor.
... The children's appreciation of the grotesque focuses particularly on the scatological imagery associated with debasing and renewing properties of the lower bodily stratum (Bakhtin 1984b representing, 'a certain form of life, which was real and ideal at the same time (Bakhtin 1984b, p. 8). It also bears more resemblance to the 'teasing' highlighted by Cameron et al (2008) and not their use of 'clowning' as here clowning is seen as 'attempting to provoke a response from a communicative partner' (Cameron et al 2008, p. 8) as opposed to attempting to repeat an act in order to 're-elicit (my emphasis) laughter from others' (Cameron et al 2008, p. 8 Interestingly, Ødegaard's study noted that the presence of an underworld was not apparent at mealtimes, suggesting that because adults engaged in humour with children on these occasions, any opportunity for children's dissention was eliminated (Ødegaard 2007) suggesting that the role practitioners have at mealtimes is central to the occurrence (or not) of carnivalesque humour. In the example below, the practitioner is seemingly unaware of the children's conversation. ...
This article presents findings from a pilot study offering an alternative framing of children's humour and laughter in an early childhood education setting. It employs a Bakhtinian carnivalesque lens to explore the nature of children's humour in an urban nursery, and investigate the framing of children's humour and laughter outside the popular paradigm of developmental psychology. In addition, it addresses the challenge that children's humour can present for early childhood practitioners, turning to Bakhtin's analysis of carnival to frame children's humour as carnivalesque. This conception is then offered as a part of a potential explanation for practitioners' occasional resistance to children's humour, proposing that dominating, authoritative discourses within early childhood education play a significant role in this. The article draws on a number of theorists, including Bakhtin more widely, to address reasons why humour is not valued pedagogically within the UK early childhood field, and suggests that further research in the area is imperative, in order that we gain a better understanding of the place and significance of children's humour within early childhood practice. Résumé Cet article présente les résultats d'une étude pilote présentant un autre cadrage de
... Grandfathers have been even more neglected in the family research literature (Scraton & Holland, 2006;Smorti, Tschiesner, & Farneti, 2012). The analysis of their contributions has been formed in part from the paucity of fatherhood research; but it has also been contended that a feminised perception of grandparenting has hampered a full appreciation of a grandfather's role (Mann, 2007) We have investigated the healthy functioning of 30-month-old toddler girls (Gillen & Cameron, 2010) with respect to their emotional security, their use of humour to navigate family engagement, their symbol system development (especially in the context of joint book reading and drawing), their utilisation of safe domestic places for playing, their eating events, their musicality, and their agency (Cameron, Kennedy, & Cameron, 2008;Cameron, Pinto, Accorti Gamannossi, Hancock, & Tapanya, 2011;Cameron, Tapanya, & Gillen, 2006;Gillen & Hancock, 2006;Hancock, Cameron, & Talay-Ongan, 2013;Pinto, Accorti Gamannossi, & Cameron, 2009;Young & Gillen, 2007, respectively). We have primarily focused on the children themselves and their strengths in interaction with siblings and caregivers. ...
Fathers' interactions with their young children are understudied. Variations between families in the masculine nurturance of toddlers can be expected, depending on personal characteristics, gender, family structures, and cultural contexts in which they are situated. This is a qualitative study, focusing on probing the nature of the exchanges between female toddlers and their male caregivers, to gain an understanding of the dynamic nature of these interchanges. We observed four thriving 30-month-old girls in Italy, the UK, Peru, and Thailand, wherein filmed transactions between them and their fathers and grandfathers during one Day in their Lives were observed, documented, and analysed. The case studies of these young girls demonstrated considerable agency in their interactions with their caregivers, which were, in part, responsible for a wide range of promotive nurturance styles in the adults.
... With respect to development, even if it seems useful to study irony in connection with other forms of humor, this aim may be difficult to achieve, given that while most studies on irony are experimental and focused on comprehension, empirical work on the development of humor in young children is mostly based on naturalistic observations of interactions in family, daily care, and nursery school (Bergen, 1989;Cameron, Kennedy, & Cameron, 2008;Groch, 1974;Hoicka & Akhtar, 2012;Loizou, 2005;Reddy, 2008). Therefore, the heterogeneity of both methods and communicative contexts makes comparing their results arduous. ...
Previous research suggests that comprehending ironic utterances is a relatively late-developing skill, emerging around 5-6 years of age. This study investigated whether younger children might show an earlier understanding when ironic utterances are performed in familiar communicative situations, and investigated the relationships among irony comprehension, language, and theory of mind (ToM) abilities. A group of 100 children aged 3.0-6.5 years was presented with 4 types of puppet scenarios depicting different communicative interactions: control, joke, contingent irony and background irony stories. Results suggested that (a) even younger children easily understand jokes, and may sometimes understand ironies; (b) children's comprehension of irony continues to develop across early childhood; and (c) receptive vocabulary scores had simultaneous effects on irony comprehension and ToM performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
... A full description of this study can be found in the following reference sources: Cameron et al. (2006) on soothing resources; Pinto et al. (2006) on joint storybook reading; Gillen and Hancock (2006) on eating events and family nutritional practices; Cameron et al. (2007) on resilient ''roots for wings''; Hancock and Gillen (2007) on creative play spaces; Young and Gillen (2007) on early musicality; Cameron et al. (2008) on humor in negotiating family relationships; Cameron and Pinto (2009) on the relationship between emergent literacy engagement and early attachment security; and most currently, Gillen and Cameron (2009) on these and other themes. ...
This social-ecological inquiry explores youth resiliency in diverse communities using innovative qualitative visual methodologies.
It engages adolescents in a process of sharing their daily experiences and reflecting on the resources they bring to bear
to thrive in the face of geographic and social relocations. The four youth participants were identified by local community
advisors as especially resilient teenagers despite experiencing transitions that could provoke risks to normative development.
The youths were interviewed and videotaped during a weekend day in [their] lives. They also engaged in deliberations on that day; took part in a photo elicitation that reflected on significant people, places,
and objects in their environments; and responded to a resilience questionnaire. These visual data and the youths’ deliberations
were analyzed for themes of positive identity and personal control observed within and across communities by their passing on the nurturant interchanges they themselves had experienced during that day.
While research on children’s humour is growing, few investigations have focused on how children use humour in conflict interactions, and specifically in group early childhood settings. Using data extracts from a project that investigated children’s naturally occurring conflict interactions in a multi-ethnic early childhood setting, we use interactional sociolinguistics to analyse how children used humour at unexpected moments during conflict situations. The analysis probes different meanings carried in the children’s use of humour, illustrating how humour intersected with personal and relational power to resolve or defuse conflict, or to coerce compliance with existing peer relational positions. The analysis broadens understandings of the significance of humour in children’s lives in early childhood settings, and particularly in the context of conflict interactions that have a ‘stretchy temporality’ connecting interactive moves to others in the past, and to existing power positions in peer relationships.
The development of humor is complex and heterogeneous within and across neurotypical and neurodivergent groups. Some autistics develop differences (not deficits) in humor appreciation, whereas others report difficulties “getting the joke” and identify this as in need of support. This is important because humor appreciation and comprehension are linked to psychological well-being and social success. This article describes the therapeutic potential for teaching humor comprehension to autistic persons and the benefit of broader education efforts to forge an understanding of the value of “different senses of humor.” The nature and development of humor comprehension in neurotypical development and autism are reviewed. Considerations for whether and how to teach humor comprehension are offered that maximize goodness-of-fit, prioritize autistic autonomy, and promote the sharing and appreciation of different kinds of “funny.”
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El uso del lenguaje en los niños de edad escolar experimenta cambios cuantitativos y cualitativos. Entre los cambios cualitativos se encuentra el desarrollo de la conciencia metapragmática, directamente implicada en la evolución del humor verbal. En este trabajo realizamos una síntesis bibliográfica que ofrece el estado de la cuestión de la aproximación a la competencia humorística como fenómeno transversal: neurológico, psicológico y lingüístico.
Both common observations and research evidence strongly suggest that there are major differences between adult males and females as to both the number of humorous attempts they display in social situations and the types of humor they initiate and appreciate. What the causes are for these differences, however, have been less clear, with attributions being related to both biological and environmental reasons. In fact, researchers who have studied the development of humor in infants, preschoolers, and elementary age children have generally observed that the early humor of both boys and girls is similar, thus raising the possibility that the differences that gradually emerge with age may be attributed more to environmental rather than to biological reasons. This chapter will discuss the humor research evidence amassed by those who have studied young children’s humor development and the potential environmental influences on humor development that may account for some of the sex differences seen in adult humor.
In enacting a quasi-ecological approach to observing young children at both home and school, this study explored young participants’ drawing transactions in and out of school in diverse communities around the globe. We applied a qualitative, visual, ‘Day in the Life’ methodology that films one full Day in their Lives. Using examples of children drawing during their Day, we documented how school and home are contexts populated by significant others whose belief systems impact upon the belief systems of the child. We also examined how drawing is used by children, teachers and family members in a collaborative and communicative manner as a powerful meaning-making tool.
This chapter traces the history of Paul McGhee’s theoretical views, research methods, and body of writing focused on children’s humor development. It describes the state of such research before he became involved, the decision-making process that led him to focus on this area of knowledge, his initial research paradigms and later research methodology, his extensive writings on humor development, and the theoretical ideas about children’s humor development that he proposed, drawing on Piagetian theory. It also briefly discusses his later work in broader fields of humor development. The chapter briefly describes the ways that the body of knowledge he provided and his emphasis on the importance of early humor development have been influential for many subsequent humor development researchers, including that of the author. It also recognizes the playfulness that Paul McGhee has brought to both his scholarly and advocacy work, which provides a model for future researchers in the field of children’s humor development.
The right to share the social heritage of a nation is an element of citizenship closely associated with education. Social heritage is understood as the negotiation of understandings within a dialectical understanding of social practice across multiple timescales. In this paper the meaning-making practices of one young child concerned with beavers as symbols of Canada is studied, using the Day in the Life methodology, across two encounters in one day, the first in ‘mat-time’ at a kindergarten and the second at afternoon tea with her family. The teacher's careful orchestration of the event is analysed, and elements of her structuring of heteroglossic discourses identified. The young girl demonstrates close attention to certain complexities in her subsequent family dialogues and expands her narrative with imagined additional elements. The paper contributes to our understanding of bridging between the early development of academic discourse registers and home-based narratives. Methodologically, a contribution is made to consideration of processes of transcription, for analytic and dissemination purposes. In conclusion, deepening linguistic ethnography through the use of multimodal methods, we find complex layers of representations and practices in the negotiation of citizenship through daily life routines.
In her characteristically engaging style, Nelson explores a topic that has fascinated and frustrated scholars for centuries. Initially drawn to the meaning of laughter through her decades of work studying crying from an attachment perspective, Nelson argues that laughter is based in the attachment system, which explains much about its confusing and apparently contradictory qualities.
Rabelaian carnivalesque provided philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin with a means of exploring the significance of humour through an examination of Middle Age peasant culture and the influence of the Renaissance on its legitimacy. This article argues that a similar phenomenon exists in modern educational settings and provides evidence to suggest that very young children are highly capable of working within this genre as a strategic orientation. It is proposed that the role of the early childhood teacher within this ‘underground culture’ is to be a dialogic partner who recognizes their dual horizontal and vertical roles as both insider and outsider: appreciating humour with children but expecting (and celebrating) the child’s position within a distinct culture that necessarily resides outside officialdom. In doing so, the article concludes that teachers will gain deeper appreciation of the important role of humour as a means of positioning the self within institutions characterized by power dynamics that are typically beyond the young child’s control. Moreover, the teacher has greater opportunities to recognize the potential of humour as a form of social mobility and agency on the part of the child.
A Day in the Life is an interdisciplinary study of thriving 2-year-old girls and their families in diverse communities around the globe. We understand development to be active participation in cultural systems of practice, and examine children's interactions with their caregivers, other companions, and the environment. We focus upon children engaged in their everyday activities, attending to the patternings of local interactions that constitute cultural activity, as well as inter-articulations between the values and understandings shaped and reshaped in the day with those formed in dialogue among research participants. A crucial element of the project is the full participation by local investigators. Our core methodology films a day in the life of each child, tracking the child through her landscape. We have observed nurturant interactions in all settings where we collected our data: Thailand, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom (UK), Peru, the United States (USA), and Turkey. Likewise, we have separately examined the various joint book-reading experiences of the children in those settings. In this article, we observe the bidirectional place of affect in joint book-reading episodes of children with different adult partners, and inspect the potential for such emergent literate activities to contribute to strong affective relationships between the children and family members.
Generating and Understanding Jokes by Five- And Nine-Year-Olds as an Expression of Theory of Mind
The main aim of the presented research is to describe children's ability to generate and understand humorous stories and pictures drawn by their peers and older or younger children. From the perspective of research on children's theories of mind, we assume that in middle childhood we will observe a transition from the basic, copy theory of mind to the interpretative one (Carpendale & Chandler, 1996). We examined 60 five- and nine-year-old children in two phases. During the first phase, the children were asked to draw a funny picture and then justify what made it funny and they had also to present the funny story. Two months later, the children were presented with some pictures chosen after the first phase as the most typical one. They had to justify why these pictures are funny. The obtained results indicate that there is a relation between the age of the subjects and the kind of interpretations of funny pictures which are consistent with the author's intentions. Significantly more nine-year-olds than five-year-olds accurately understood the author's intentions when interpreting his picture. The presented data indicate that changes in the theory of mind take place also in middle childhood and lead to a complex, interpretative theory of mind which can be discovered when researching children's understanding of jokes.
In order to extend previous early years humor research into early adolescence, the authors adapted an innovative ecological research method such that at-risk adolescents could be filmed during an entire waking day in their life. Community youth advocates nominated one 15-year-old female and one 14-year-old male as doing well despite adverse circumstances. We examined the types and functions of these youths’ humor within their social contexts. Their humor included joking, teasing, physical play, light tones, irony, sarcasm, and mocking/parody. Humor served many socioemotional roles, such as navigating complex socially sensitive topics and situations, and facilitating affiliation with friends and family. Humor assists in traversing challenging social terrain and can serve as a protective factor under risky circumstances.
This study investigated the humorous activity of two infants, 18 and 21 months old, in their infant group childcare setting. This was a qualitative study that followed two infants for four months. Through participant and non‐participant observations, journal writing and interviews, data were collected on children’s involvement in humorous activity. The findings suggest that the two infants were involved in producing and appreciating incongruities as well as empowering themselves by violating the rules within their childcare setting. At the same time there were distinct differences in the way they were involved in humorous events. Personal social knowledge and reactions from caregivers impacted their humorous behaviors. An individual profile is constructed for each child that points out their uniqueness and their personal way of regulating their social self through the production and appreciation of humor.
Research on the development of humour has largely neglected the first year of infancy and, in particular, humour creation by infants. In two longitudinal interview-based studies with parents of infants aged between 7 and 11 months, it was found that most infants were reported to make others laugh by deliberately repeating actions in order to re-elicit previously obtained laughter. Their actions are compared to actions of adult clowns, showing many similarities and developmental continuities and suggesting that the origins of humour may lie earlier in infancy than hitherto accepted. Humour creation can be seen in these engagements to be an interpersonal rather than individual process. Further, at least in infancy, humour creation is also an emotional rather than primarily intellectual process.
We explored a range of familial supports in the development of “strong” young children. We videotaped one full day in the life of each of five 30-month-old girls in Thailand, Canada, Peru, Italy, and the United Kingdom. A social-interactional conceptual framework guided our interpretive methodology. The diverse cultural tools brought to bear by both the child and her caregivers that appeared to enhance robust responses to the vicissitudes of everyday life are illustrated and analyzed as developing foundations of thriving. Toddlers and their caregivers enlisted soothing resources that exemplify microsystemic support that promoted the autonomy and social maturity valued by the families. Such factors appear to be associated with developing psychosocial well-being and resilience.
This paper contributes to the growing research literature on children's 'intimate geographies' by focusing on two-year-old children's explorations and play within the domestic spaces of their homes. It draws on video data showing three young girls playing in selected home spaces i.e. a family grocery shop in Peru, the upstairs rooms of a house in America, and the balcony of an apartment in Italy. Through analysis of short video sequences the paper describes the way children use and invest meaning in these spaces. It is argued that the three domestic locations can be seen as 'safe places', in both material and personal senses; and that they enable children's sense of belonging, foster their 'emplaced knowledge' and build on their confidence to explore spaces further afield.
THE HYPOTHESIS WAS ADVANCED THAT AN IMPORTANT INGREDIENT IN THE HUMOR RESPONSE IS THE DEGREE TO WHICH THE HUMOR STIMULUS MAKES A COGNITIVE DEMAND ON THE INDIVIDUAL. THE SPECIFIC PREDICTION TESTED WAS THAT CARTOONS AT THE UPPER LIMIT OF THE CHILD'S ABILITY TO COMPREHEND WOULD EVOKE THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF LAUGHTER AS WELL AS THE GREATEST PREFERENCE. GROUPS OF CARTOONS VARYING IN DIFFICULTY LEVEL FROM EASY TO NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE WERE ADMINISTERED TO 20 CHILDREN (10 BOYS AND 10 GIRLS) OF AVERAGE INTELLECT IN EACH OF THE 3RD, 5TH, AND 7TH GRADES. AS PREDICTED, AT ALL 3 GRADES MIRTH AND PREFERENCE SCORES PEKED AT THE MODERATELY DIFFICULT RANGE OF THE DIFFICULTY DIMENSION. THE FINDINGS ARE DISCUSSED IN RELATION TO THE CHILD'S MOTIVE OF COGNITIVE MASTERY, AS WELL AS TO A MOTIVATION-FREE INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH.
Preface PART 1: TWO NATURAL KINDS 1. Approaching the Literary 2. Two Modes of Thought 3. Possible Castles PART 2: LANGUAGE AND REALITY 4. The Transactional Self 5. The Inspiration of Vygotsky 6. Psychological Reality 7. Nelson Goodman's Worlds 8. Thought and Emotion PART 3: ACTING IN CONSTRUCTED WORLDS 9. The Language of Education 10. Developmental Theory as Culture Afterword Appendix: A Reader's Retelling of "Clay" by James Joyce Notes Credits Index
In this Monograph, we examine how toddlers and their caregivers from four cultural communities collaborate in shared activities. We focus both on similarities across communities in processes of guided participation--structuring children's participation and bridging between their understanding and that of their caregivers--and on differences in how guided participation occurs. We examine the idea that a key cultural difference entails who is responsible for learning--whether adults take this responsibility by structuring teaching situations or whether children take responsibility for learning through observation and through participating in adult activities with caregivers' support. We speculate that these two patterns relate to cultural variation in the segregation of children from adult activities of their community and in emphasis on formal schooling. The four communities of our study vary along these lines as well as in other ways: a Mayan Indian town in Guatemala, a middle-class urban group in the United States, a tribal village in India, and a middle-class urban neighborhood in Turkey. In each community, we visited the families of 14 toddlers (aged 12-24 months) for an interview that was focused on child-rearing practices, which included observations of caregivers helping the toddlers operate novel objects spontaneously during adult activities. Results are based on systematic analysis of patterns of communication and attention in each family in each community, combining the tools of ethnographic description, graphic analysis, and statistics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
In this Monograph, we examine how toddlers and their caregivers from four cultural communities collaborate in shared activities. We focus both on similarities across communities in processes of guided participation-structuring children's participation and bridging between their understanding and that of their caregivers-and on differences in how guided participation occurs. We examine the idea that a key cultural difference entails who is responsible for learning-whether adults take this responsibility by structuring teaching situations or whether children take responsibility for learning through observation and through participating in adult activities with caregivers' support. We speculate that these two patterns relate to cultural variation in the segregation of children from adult activities of their community and in emphasis on formal schooling. The four communities of our study vary along these lines as well as in other ways: a Mayan Indian town in Guatemala, a middle-class urban group in the United States, a tribal village in India, and a middle-class urban neighborhood in Turkey. In each community, we visited the families of 14 toddlers (aged 12-24 months) for an interview that was focused on child-rearing practices, which included observations of caregivers helping the toddlers operate novel objects and put on clothes on our request as well as toddlers exploring novel objects spontaneously during adult activities. Results are based on systematic analysis of patterns of communication and attention in each family in each community, combining the tools of ethnographic description, graphic analysis, and statistics. The findings point to the importance of understanding not only how children learn through instruction that is managed by adults but also how they learn through keen observation and participation in adult activities. A major contribution of the study is an analysis of keen observation through sharing attention among complex ongoing events, an approach that was more apparent in the two non-middle-class communities, in which children are minimally segregated from adult activities.
This study examined attitudes and uses of humor by occupational therapists with their adult clients with physical disabilities. A cross-sectional survey of randomly selected occupational therapists from the American Occupational Therapy Association's Physical Disabilities Special Interest Section was used; 283 surveys qualified for the study. All of the respondents had positive attitudes towards humor and a large majority reported using humor. Four key areas of humor were further analyzed: relationships, coping, promoting physical health, and treatment compliance. While a large majority professed to value humor in each area, only about one-third reported using it in the last two areas. Humor attitudes and humor behaviors in each area showed a moderate positive correlation. Both spontaneous and planned use was reported. The results of this survey support humor use in occupational therapy practice to help clients rehabilitate.
This study looked at how six infants in a group child care setting produced and appreciated humor. With the use of multiple qualitative methods, participant and non‐participant observations, journal writing, videotaping, interviewing, and document review this study looked at children’s humor as indicated through their smiles and laughter. Findings of this study suggest that there are two theories that best describe young children’s humorous behavior, namely the Theory of the Absurd and Empowerment Theory. The Theory of the Absurd includes events that are out of the ordinary and violate children’s existing schemata. It emphasizes the incongruity of an event through funny gestures or positions, the incongruous use of materials and actions. Empowerment Theory describes young children’s ability to violate the expectations of their caregivers and use humor to empower themselves. It highlights a different form of incongruity which has to do with the violation of expectations, intentionally or otherwise.
While considerable research has been performed on the development of humor in older children, little is known about the origins of verbal humor in infancy. Data from a systematic diary study of early lexical development were used to provide a comprehensive account of one child's earliest manifestations of verbal humor from age 15 to 30 months. Symbolic play and conceptual mastery were found to be developmental precursors to the production of incongruity jokes. The emergence of each of three classes of jokes over time was directly related to conceptual complexity, with simple mislabelings occuring earliest, and word jokes occuring last. Incongruent label jokes tended to involve labels that were semantically related to the actual (correct) label. The role of playfulness cues in the interpretation of events as humorous and in the early emergence of humor was considered. The relation of these results to current models of humor development is discussed.
1. Language as a tool for thinking 2. Laying the Foundations 3. The given and the new 4. Persuasion, control and argument 5. Communities 6. Development through dialogue 7. Investigating interthinking Conclusion
The compelling power of humor makes it a recurrent topic for research in many fields, including communication. Three theories of humor creation emerge in humor research: the relief theory, which focuses on physiological release of tension; the incongruity theory, singling out violations of a rationally learned pattern; and the superiority theory, involving a sense of victory or triumph. Each theory helps to explain the creation of different aspects of humor, but each runs into problems explaining rhetorical applications of humor. Because each theory of humor origin tries to explain all instances of humor, the diverging communication effects of humor remain unexplained. Humor's enactment leads to 4 basic functions of humor in communication. Two tend to unite communicators: the identification and the clarification functions. The other 2 tend to divide 1 set of communicators from others: the enforcement and differentiation functions. Exploration of these effects-based functions of humor will clarify understanding of its use in messages. Humor use unites communicators through mutual identification and clarification of positions and values, while dividing them through enforcement of norms and differentiation of acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors or people. This paradox in the functions of humor in communication as, alternately, a unifier and divider, allows humor use to delineate social boundaries.
This paper explores the methodology of an ecological investigation of aspects of culture in the interactional construction of early childhood in diverse global communities: Peru, Italy, Canada, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Regarding culture as a dynamic dimension of the child's socialisation, the approach taken was to film a ‘day in the life’ of a two‐and‐a‐half‐year‐old girl in each location. The principal investigators viewed these five ‘days’ and selected clips were made into a compilation tape, to be interrogated and interpreted by the local investigators and the child's family. These latter reflections were also taped and then applied to a growing appreciation of the child in cultural context. Other inter‐researcher techniques were used to elucidate and explore events and values further. Reflexive concerns as to the interplay between aims and methods in interpretive research are critical components of this endeavour to develop new cultural understandings of the girls in context.
The purpose of this article is to describe McGhee's (1979) stages of humor development from 18 months to 12 years as they relate to Piaget's cognitive stages (Papalia, Olds, & Feldman, 2001) and social development. Humor develops in stages just as other aspects of child development. It parallels and enhances physical, cognitive, language, and psychosocial skill attainment (Franzini, 2002; Robinson, 1991). Knowledge of humor development will provide therapists with an additional tool to facilitate communication with their pediatric clients by helping therapists consider children's developmental levels when using humor in therapeutic contexts.
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