Playful Minds: Humorous Peer Play and Social Understanding in Childhood, 2021-2023

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Humour plays a crucial role in children’s early interactions, likely promoting the growth of social understanding and facilitating the development of social relationships. To date, the connection between humour production in peer play and the development of social understanding skills in middle childhood has received limited attention. In a diverse community sample of 130 children residing in the UK (M = 6.16 years old, range 5-7; 51.5% female, 47.7% male, 0.8% non-binary; 75.2% of mothers and 68.2% of fathers identified as Welsh, English, Scottish, or Irish), we conducted detailed observational coding of children’s humour production during peer play and examined associations with children’s performance on a battery of social understanding assessments. Multilevel models showed that 42.8% of the variance in children’s humour production was explained by play partner effects. When controlling for the effect of play partner and other individual child characteristics (age, gender, receptive vocabulary) children’s spontaneous attributions of mental states to animated shapes was associated with humour production. Results are discussed considering how these playful exchanges reflect and influence the development of socio-cognitive competencies.

Project Abstract "A, B, C, D, E, F, R!" (Louise, age 6) "H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O... PEE! Get it? Pee!" (Chris, age 8) This interaction between siblings shows that humour is a central part of children's close, playful, and warm interactions. Humour may be related to positive outcomes later in development, as certain styles of humour are linked to better wellbeing across the lifespan. Humorous children may be better able to cope with stress and worries, be more able to build positive social relationships, and be better able to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. To date, there is no systematic study of the ways in which positive outcomes arise from humour in childhood, which is surprising considering there is good reason to suppose humour in childhood is associated with better wellbeing. We aim to explore the relationship between humour and other core social and cognitive childhood abilities, and to understand pathways by which humour may attenuate the negative effect of stressful life experiences on children's wellbeing. This investigation will be conducted within the context of a new multi-method, multi-informant longitudinal study, where children between the ages of seven and nine will be assessed over three time points: At Time 1 (7-8 years) caregivers and teachers will complete online questionnaires about children's family circumstances, their wellbeing, and any recent stressful life events (e.g., the passing of a loved one, separation from a close family member). At Time 2 (6 months later) the children will be assessed at school with a battery of tasks that assess how well they get along with others, their understanding of others' minds, as well as their language and memory abilities. They will also be video-recorded with a classmate to examine how they spontaneously produce humour during free play. We will examine the quantity and the kinds of humour children produce within this interaction, such as nonsense words (e.g., gobbledegook), clowning about (e.g., silly dancing) and talking about disgusting or forbidden topics (e.g., bathroom humour). At Time 3 (6 months after Time 2), primary caregivers and teachers will be contacted again to complete more online questionnaires about children's later wellbeing. This new study will provide a rich data set, within which we will answer the following questions: To what degree is humour in childhood related to (1) children's ability to understand the minds of others and (2) their social competence? 3) To what extent does children's humour alter the impact of stressful life experiences on their later wellbeing? To answer questions 1 and 2, we will harness data from the child assessments at Time 2. We will firstly investigate how children's humour is related to tasks that assess how they understand others' minds, and we will secondly investigate the links between children's observed humour and how well children get along with others. To answer the final question, we will investigate how children's humour at Time 2 is associated with children's later wellbeing at T3 (rated by caregivers and teachers). We will investigate pathways between children's stressful life experiences at Time 1, their humour at Time 2 and their wellbeing at Time 3. Child wellbeing is a major topic of research, and is of considerable public and government interest, given that the UK is ranked amongst the lowest of developed and European countries for child wellbeing. This project will provide new and important knowledge of humour as a driver of positive or negative change in development. The findings from this study will benefit researchers in developmental psychology, they will inform policy and will provide new knowledge for the general public, educators and clinicians concerned with child development. As such, we plan an exciting and diverse series of impact-related activities to ensure the findings reach a range of academic and non-academic audiences.