A child’s sense of humor can indicate a lot about their development and thought processes. What children find funny oftentimes coincides with their developmental stage; for example, toddlers who are learning potty training find humor in “potty talk,” while older children who have already learned potty training don’t think bathroom jokes are funny.
Laughing and smiling appear to be innate human behaviors, with infants as young as twelve-hours old being able to smile and babies who are only a couple of months old knowing how to laugh. One prime aspect of infant development is realizing that they are their own person and acquiring object permanence, which is the understanding that people and objects still exist even when they are out-of-sight. Object permanence acquisition begins when a baby is around eight-months-old. During this stage of development, many babies find humor in the game peekaboo, where someone hides their face behind their hands, opens their hands and says “peekaboo!” A baby with object permanence finds peekaboo funny because they understand the game, and the fact that someone they know is behind the hands. Peekaboo can be a game of prediction for infants acquiring object permanence; they know a familiar face is hiding, they predict that the face will reappear, and feel relief when it does.
This same concept applies to many other stages of cognitive development; two-year-olds who are learning language find gibberish talk funny because they are in the process of grasping their language and understand that gibberish is nonsense. In the same sense, when six-year-olds are comprehending logic and abstraction, they find humor in jokes that involve word-play, logical flaws and juxtapositions, like “What’s the best month for a parade?” “March,” as these jokes reflect their current cognitive development.
Overall, the next time you’re wondering about what your child is learning about themselves and the world, look to the source of their laughter, as a child’s sense of humor often concurs with their development.
Kylie Robinshaw
Research Assistant, UConn KIDS
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