Article1973

Laughter in young children.

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Humor Studies and Applications Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Child and Animal Learning Development

Abstract

Research studies of laughter in children are reviewed, and a model describing eliciting conditions for laughter and related behavior is described. Following Spencer (1860), Berlyne (I960), and others, it is proposed that laughter occurs after conditions of heightened tension or arousal when at the same time there is a judgment that the situation is safe or inconsequential. The special case of laughter to discrepant or incongruous stimulation is described in detail, and it is suggested that laughter serves the function of signaling to a caretaker that a given stimulus is within the child's tolerable limits of arousal. In his 1969 review of laughter, humor, and play, Berlyne asks whether there could be any selective advantage to the organism who laughs, or whether this activity is as biologically superfluous as it seems. To the developmental psychologist this is an intriguing question; taking a biological view of developmental processes has often been helpful in understanding the behavior of the child (e.g., Bowlby, 1969). At the same time, examining such behaviors as laughter in the child may lead to generalizations impossible to discern in the more complicated laughter of adults or the rare laughter of primates. The present paper reviews selected studies of laughter in young children, exploring laughter's possible adaptive value and elaborating Berlyne's arousal model of laughter to describe eliciting conditions for laughter and related emotions. OBSERVATIONS OF INFANT LAUGHTER In human infants, laughter is not observed during the first weeks of life and usually follows infant smiling by at least 1 month. Wolff (1963) made systematic observations of eight infants during the first weeks after birth, observing both spontaneous and elicited smiling (to auditory stimulation) in infants within

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References

1968Identity : Youth and Crisis. 1968 1872The expression of the emotions in man and animals.1952The origins of intelligence in children.1960Conflict, arousal, and curiosity.1969Identity—Youth and Crisis 2024Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious 1905 1967THE ACT OF CREATION 1955Drives and the C. N. S. (conceptual nervous system).

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2011Aping expressions? Chimpanzees produce distinct laugh types when responding to laughter of others.1993The adaptive value of humor and laughter 1983Humor and Laughter in Social Interaction and some Implications for Humor Research 2020What Makes Things Funny? An Integrative Review of the Antecedents of Laughter and Amusement 2001The long-term psychobiological consequences of infant emotions: Prescriptions for the twenty-first century 1994The development of laughter in mother-infant communication: Timing parameters and temporal sequences

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