Neuroscience
There is probably nothing more fun than making a baby or toddler laugh. And now there's news that it could even help with learning – the toddler's not the adult's.
In the first study to look at the effects of humour on learning at such a young age, Rana Esseily and her colleagues began by showing 53 18-month-olds how to reach a toy duck with a cardboard rake (other toddlers who'd spontaneously used the rake as a reaching tool were excluded). Crucially, half the participating toddlers were given several non-humorous demonstrations of how to use the rake to reach and pull the duck nearer. In these straight demonstrations, the experimenter was smiley, but just played with the duck for a bit after getting hold of it. The other toddlers were given several humorous demonstrations. In this case, after getting hold of the duck, the experimenter suddenly threw it on the floor and smiled. Sixteen of the 37 toddlers in the jokey condition laughed at least once when shown the funny demonstrations.
Next, the researchers placed the rake near each toddler's hand, to see if they would imitate the action and use the rake to reach the duck for themselves. Among the laughing toddlers, all but one (93.7 per cent) used the rake to reach the duck. In comparison, just 19 per cent of the non-laughing toddlers in the jokey condition used the rake, and just 25 per cent of the 16 toddlers who'd been given the straight (non-jokey) demonstrations.
"Our results suggest that laughing might be a stimulant of learning even during the second year of life," the researchers concluded. However, they conceded that there are other possible interpretations of their findings. For example, perhaps infants who laugh at jokes are just more cognitively advanced and that's why they showed superior learning (although if that were true, you'd also expect a similar range of ability in the control group, which wasn't found). Or maybe it's not laughter per se that aids toddlers' learning, but any kind of positive emotion. "Further work is clearly now required to elucidate the question of the mechanisms underlying this effect of laughter on infants' learning," the researchers said.
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Esseily, R., Rat-Fischer, L., Somogyi, E., O'Regan, K., & Fagard, J. (2015). Humour production may enhance observational learning of a new tool-use action in 18-month-old infants Cognition and Emotion, 1-9 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1036840
--further reading--
Little comedians
The jokes that toddlers make
Girls' and boys' brains respond differently to funny videos
How many psychologists does it take to explain a joke?
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Toddlers learn better when you make them giggle
In the first study to look at the effects of humour on learning at such a young age, Rana Esseily and her colleagues began by showing 53 18-month-olds how to reach a toy duck with a cardboard rake (other toddlers who'd spontaneously used the rake as a reaching tool were excluded). Crucially, half the participating toddlers were given several non-humorous demonstrations of how to use the rake to reach and pull the duck nearer. In these straight demonstrations, the experimenter was smiley, but just played with the duck for a bit after getting hold of it. The other toddlers were given several humorous demonstrations. In this case, after getting hold of the duck, the experimenter suddenly threw it on the floor and smiled. Sixteen of the 37 toddlers in the jokey condition laughed at least once when shown the funny demonstrations.
Next, the researchers placed the rake near each toddler's hand, to see if they would imitate the action and use the rake to reach the duck for themselves. Among the laughing toddlers, all but one (93.7 per cent) used the rake to reach the duck. In comparison, just 19 per cent of the non-laughing toddlers in the jokey condition used the rake, and just 25 per cent of the 16 toddlers who'd been given the straight (non-jokey) demonstrations.
"Our results suggest that laughing might be a stimulant of learning even during the second year of life," the researchers concluded. However, they conceded that there are other possible interpretations of their findings. For example, perhaps infants who laugh at jokes are just more cognitively advanced and that's why they showed superior learning (although if that were true, you'd also expect a similar range of ability in the control group, which wasn't found). Or maybe it's not laughter per se that aids toddlers' learning, but any kind of positive emotion. "Further work is clearly now required to elucidate the question of the mechanisms underlying this effect of laughter on infants' learning," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Esseily, R., Rat-Fischer, L., Somogyi, E., O'Regan, K., & Fagard, J. (2015). Humour production may enhance observational learning of a new tool-use action in 18-month-old infants Cognition and Emotion, 1-9 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1036840
--further reading--
Little comedians
The jokes that toddlers make
Girls' and boys' brains respond differently to funny videos
How many psychologists does it take to explain a joke?
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Psychologists Have Devised A Test For Measuring One-year-olds' Creativity
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- Toddlers Have An Instinct For Fairness And Generosity
Anecdotally, anyone who's spent time around toddlers knows that they mostly don't like sharing their toys. Together with research showing that toddlers, like adults, get pretty attached to their things and are reluctant to give them up, this has...
- Little Comedians
Toddlers as young as 19 months are able to distinguish jokes from mistakes - a skill that lays the groundwork for their later ability to recognise lies and false beliefs. That's according to Elena Hoicka and Merideth Gattis, who tested a large group...
- People Are Better Teachers Than Teletubbies
In this bit of startling news, Toddlers learn their first words better from people than from Teletubbies.But the initial comparison (discussed in the press release) wasn't between live Teletubbies and live people, or between televised Teletubbies...
- Tv 2.0 For Babies?!
Last Tuesday's Times reports on a study by Vanderbilt University researchers suggesting that interactive television can actually be good for children's development. Earlier research showed that 3-5 year olds who watched Blues Clues "score better...