Event Abstract

Back to Event

The production of humor in young children: funniness, teasing and irony

Gabriella Airenti1* and Romina Angeleri2
  • 1 Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy
  • 2 University of New Mexico, United States

The production of humor in young children has received increasing attention in recent years. Researchers have started to recognize that from an early age infants and young children take part in interactions with adults in a humorous way, as reported in a number of studies based on observations performed in natural contexts such as family, day care and nursery school (Bainum, Lounsbury and Pollio, 1984; Bergen, 1989; Cameron, Kennedy and Cameron, 2008; Dubois, Farmer and Farmer, 1984; Dunn, 1988; Groch, 1974; Hoicka and Akhtar, 2012; Loizou, 2005; Reddy, 2008) However, even though humorous interactions are usually reported to occur already during the first years of life, at least in their simplest forms, the appearance of more sophisticated and complex forms of verbal humor—like irony and sarcasm—appears to be rather delayed (Dews and Winner,1997; Filippova and Astington, 2008). Most studies of irony have focused on the ability of children to comprehend ironic utterances, given that eliciting children’s production of these communicative acts in the laboratory can be very challenging. Only a handful of studies have addressed children’s spontaneous production of verbal irony using natural observations of spontaneous communication in the family context (Pexman et al., 2009; Recchia et al., 2010). This can partially be attributed to the difficulty in collecting data on irony production. Since irony is a rare phenomenon compared with other forms of humor, prolonged observations would be required to record examples of children’s irony production, as well as to decide whether the absence of recorded instances of irony actually indicates a lack of irony use in children’s conversations. In the present study, we sought to better characterize children’s humor production by examining the spontaneous use of different forms of humor in natural communicative contexts in children from 2 to 6 years of age. To obtain a broad descriptive picture of how children use humor in their everyday life, we asked parents to report on various types of humor, from the simplest forms—for example clowning—to the more sophisticated ones such as irony and sarcasm. We were also interested in examining the effect of age on the appearance of complex forms of humor; thus, our sample included children from a wide range of age groups. In the current literature, humor development is usually assumed to follow a developmental trajectory in which easy forms, like clowning and teasing, appear in young children, while more complex forms—like irony— emerge at around 5 years of age, in tandem with theory of mind skills. However, as we are going to argue, there are reasons for doubting this view, and further investigations will be needed to clarify this point (Airenti, 2016; Angeleri and Airenti, 2014; Loukusa and Leinonen, 2008). Here we contribute to this discussion by providing some new data on how children spontaneously use humor in their everyday conversation starting from early development. We investigated multiple aspects of humor in children, from simple types of funniness to complex forms of irony and sarcasm. Data were collected through parent report; 190 parents of 190 children aged 2 to 6 years recorded humorous instances observed in their children's interactions during a month of observation. Humorous instances reported by parents were coded into four main categories, funniness, teasing, irony, and sarcasm for detailed analysis. Results indicate that, in naturalistic settings, even sophisticated forms of humor may begin to appear earlier than commonly believed. These findings are discussed in relation to the children’s familiarity with the communicative context in which humor is used.

References

Airenti G., 2016. Playing with Expectations: A Contextual View of Humor Development. Frontiers in Psychology, 7:1392. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01392.
Angeleri, R., and Airenti, G. (2014). The development of joke and irony understanding: A study with 3- to 6-year-old children. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68, 133–146.
Bainum, C. K., Lounsbury, K. R., and Pollio, H. R. (1984). The development of laughing and smiling in nursery school children. Child Development, 55, 1946–1957.
Bergen, D. (1989). Characteristics of young children’s expression of humour in home settings as observed by parents. International Journal of Educology, 3, 124–135.
Cameron, E. L., Kennedy, K. M., and Cameron, C. A. (2008). “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. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 23, 5–18
Dews, S., and Winner, E. (1997). Attributing meaning to deliberately false utterances: The case of irony. In C. Mandell and A. McCabe (Eds.), The problem of meaning: Behavioral and cognitive perspectives (pp. 377–414). Amsterdam, NE: North-Holland/Elsevier Science.
Dubois, B. L., Farmer, J. L. and Farmer, S. S. (1984). Occasions for laughter: The development of humor in B from twenty-four to thirty-six months. Anthropological Linguistics, 26, 270–284.
Dunn, J. (1988). The beginning of social understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Filippova, E., and Astington, J. W. (2008). Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development, 79, 126–138.
Groch, A. S. (1974). Joking and appreciation of humor in nursery school children. Child Development, 45, 1098–1102
Hoicka, E., & Akhtar, N. (2012). Early humour production. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 30, 586–603.
Loizou, E. (2005). Infant humor: The theory of the absurd and the empowerment theory. International Journal of Early Years Education, 13, 43–53.
Loukusa, S., & Leinonen, E. (2008). Development of comprehension of ironic utterances in 3- to 9-year-old Finnish-speaking children. Psychology of Language and Communication, 12, 55–69.
Pexman, P. M., Zdrazilova, L., McConnachie, D., Deater-Deckard, K., and Petrill, S. A. (2009). “That was smooth, mom”: Children’s production of verbal and gestural irony. Metaphor and Symbol, 24, 237–248.
Recchia, H. E., Howe, N., Ross, H. S., and Alexander, S. (2010). Children’s understanding and production of verbal irony in family conversations. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 28, 255–274.
Reddy, V. (2008). How infants know minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Keywords: Humor, development, Teasing, irony, Parent Report

Conference: XPRAG.it 2018 - Second Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference, Pavia, Italy, 30 May - 1 Jun, 2018.

Presentation Type: Poster or Oral

Topic: Experimental Pragmatics

Citation: Airenti G and Angeleri R (2018). The production of humor in young children: funniness, teasing and irony. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: XPRAG.it 2018 - Second Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.73.00014

Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.

The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.

Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.

For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.

Received: 15 May 2018; Published Online: 14 Dec 2018.

* Correspondence: Prof. Gabriella Airenti, Università degli Studi di Torino, Turin, Italy, gabriella.airenti@unito.it