If you try to tell a little boy a joke or use sarcasm, he probably looks at you without knowing what you are talking about. In the case of babies, it can be even more complicated to impress them: when you imitate a clown they ignore you and laugh at any nonsense nonsense. It's not that kids don't have a sense of humor, but it's still not entirely clear what things are funny to them at different ages and from what age they begin to understand things like sarcasm and irony.
My two-year-old son has recently begun to grab my nose and pretend to throw it in the garbage can while laughing. It may not be a joke that I will try at my next dinner with friends, but it shows that his sense of humor is developing.
The main factor necessary for humor to evolve in children is socialization. Children should understand that they are sharing an experience with another person before they can begin to establish a sense of humor. It is typically something we do laughing and sharing reactions with other people, a process that begins effectively as soon as a newborn experiences eye contact with other people and smiles. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky believed that humorous social interactions of this type really do what is to facilitate the child's cognitive development.
In Babies and more Life with laughter is better: how to favor children's sense of humor However, a child needs to have basic cognitive skills to be able to tell jokes in the first place (beyond simply putting funny faces). The most important thing would be imagination, as well as the ability to adopt a different perspective and language. Because these skills tend to develop at a different rate in each child (as they continue to grow and change throughout adolescence and adulthood) there is no firm theory that can accurately determine the specific stages of child development. humor in relation to age.
Language
Almost all types of humor involve understanding that there is an inconsistency between a concept and a situation. In other words, we laugh when things surprise us because they seem out of place. Take for example the following joke: "A horse enters a bar and the waiter says: why is that face so long?" It may be funny the fact that a horse does not usually enter a bar, but the joke is funny because first we ask ourselves why a sad horse is going to be and then we understand that the phrase has two different meanings: a horse has literally , a long face.
Hence it may seem that language is a prerequisite for the development of humor. Babies who still cannot speak and younger children with limited language usually enjoy physical humor, such as playing cuckoo. However, these simple jokes with less cognitive demand than language-based jokes are also based on understanding that there is an incongruity. The cuckoo game has an element of surprise, since someone suddenly appears out of nowhere.
In fact, many researchers argue that the key is communication and that humor facilitates the process of learning a language.
In Babies and more, what are babies laughing at?Imagination
Imagination plays an important role in detecting inconsistencies, since it helps children to locate themselves in a different place, to represent social roles that they would not normally play and even to pretend that their nose is no longer in their face.
Imagination begins to appear in children around 12-18 months. Interestingly, it corresponds to the moment when children begin to copy the jokes of parents (making them more involved in the production of their own style of humor). In fact, children as young as seven months can deliberately repeat any behavior that causes laughter, such as a funny face or playing cuckoo.
The development of the imagination is important so that a child can produce his own jokes when the time comes and it is something that begins to occur around two years, with jokes that are often based on objects, such as putting on underwear in the head, or conceptual, how to affirm that "the pig makes mu".
When they make up their own jokes, children tend to be inspired by what they are learning and it should be noted that it is something that helps them understand social norms. For example, my son often jokes that his friend Lilly "screwed up on the floor" and it is because at this time learning to go to the bathroom is an important part of his life. Joking about it is a good way to learn about the social rituals and emotions that accompany this process, particularly when learning to react to different mishaps.
In Babies and more How to survive the stage of poop-ass-fart-pee ... with humor Illusions and deceptions
Another cognitive ability that helps children develop humor is to understand how the human mind works. It is important that they know that different people may know other things or have other mental states (and that some people may be wrong or can be deceived). For example, when parents pretend to be oblivious to a child who sneaks up to scare him, it is actually an example of a child who understands cheating.
In fact, there are studies that have shown that this kind of knowledge is crucial for children to understand more complex jokes that include sarcasm and irony. An investigation showed that some children of only three years (although normally around the age of five) are able to understand some forms of irony. In the experiment, the children enjoyed a puppet show and then were asked questions about what they had seen. An example of irony was when a puppet broke a plate and another commented: "your mother will be very happy." Some children could laugh and understand that this was not literal and that the mother would not be happy at all.
Other studies maintain that the understanding of irony develops through one's own experiences with humor and not in taking advantage of illusions or knowing that another person can be deceived. The joke is something social and cultural, so a part of this process is learned through social interactions.
When children have developed a basic understanding of others and their own imagination, they can use their humor to explore emotions, both possible and real. For example, if a child starts to throw invisible food and shout for joy: "I am a disaster," you can make one of your parents act as if you were angry. The joke in this case allows them to explore anger safely.
So when it comes to children's humor, we have to be patient. Luckily, because all those Disney and Pixar movies would be much harder to bear without the jokes that the kids simply don't understand. For now, let's keep stealing noses.
Author: Paige Davis, Professor of Psychology, University of Huddersfield.
This article has originally been published in The Conversation. You can read the original article here.
Translated by Silvestre Urbón
Photos | Pixabay
