A study by researchers at the University of Bristol identifies the onset of humor at an early age and how it develops over the first years of life. Details of this work are published in the journal Behavior Research Methods.
Humour is universal. It allows our species to cope with stress, make friends, be creative, or attract potential mates. Despite its importance, there is little research on how humor first emerges and how it develops later.
To find out, a team from the School of Education in Bristol sought to determine the different types of humor emerging during early childhood. For this work, the researchers developed a survey incorporating some twenty questions asked of the parents of 671 children aged 0 to 47 months from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada.
In terms of results, the earliest reported age at which some children seemed to enjoy humor was one month . About half of the children appreciated humor at two months and 50% of them produced humor by 11 months. The study also shows that when children produce humour, they often do so afterwards, with half of the children joking in the last three hours preceding the survey (again according to the parents).
The team has identified several different types of humor offered based on age . Children under the age of one seemed to enjoy physical, visual and auditory forms of humour. Among them are games of hide and seek (hiding your face before saying hello, for example), tickling and grimacing, amusing voices and noises or even the abusive use of objects (for example, putting a mug on head).
After a year, children seemed to appreciate other types of humor , this time involving obtaining a reaction from others. Examples include teasing or scaring others. These children also found it fun to imitate an animal.
Two-year-old humor then reflected language development . Labeling errors (dogs quack) and nonsense words are examples. The researchers also found that children in this age group began to show naughtiness, enjoying making fun of others or sometimes being physically aggressive (pushing someone for example).
Finally, three-year-olds no longer hesitated to play with social rules (saying mean words to be funny for example). At this age, they also begin to understand puns and puns.
“Our results highlight that humor is a complex developing process during the first four years of life “, underlines Elena Hoicka, principal of the study. "Given its universality and importance in many aspects of life, it is important that we develop tools to determine how humor develops in the first place in order to better understand not only the emergence of humor itself, but also how it can help young children function cognitively and socially “.
Research involving more children is needed, but eventually this work could actually be used as an early development diagnostic tool for parents and educators.
