Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa CruzSchool of Psychology, Cardiff University.
Cogn Sci. 2008 Sep;32(6):985-1002. doi: 10.1080/03640210801981841.
We investigated humor as a context for learning about abstraction and disbelief. More specifically, we investigated how parents support humor understanding during book sharing with their toddlers. In Study 1, a corpus analysis revealed that in books aimed at 1-to 2-year-olds, humor is found more often than other forms of doing the wrong thing including mistakes, pretense, lying, false beliefs, and metaphors. In Study 2, 20 parents read a book containing humorous and non-humorous pages to their 19-to 26-month-olds. Parents used a significantly higher percentage of high abstraction extra-textual utterances (ETUs) when reading the humorous pages. In Study 3, 41 parents read either a humorous or non-humorous book to their 18-to 24-month-olds. Parents reading the humorous book made significantly more ETUs coded for a specific form of high abstraction: those encouraging disbelief of prior utterances. Sharing humorous books thus increases toddlers' exposure to high abstraction and belief-based language.
我们研究了幽默作为学习抽象和怀疑的语境。更具体地说，我们研究了父母在与幼儿分享书籍时如何支持幽默理解。在研究 1 中，语料库分析显示，在面向 1 至 2 岁儿童的书籍中，幽默的出现频率高于其他形式的做错事，包括错误、假装、说谎、虚假信念和隐喻。在研究 2 中，20 位家长给 19 至 26 个月大的幼儿阅读了一本包含幽默和非幽默页面的书。家长在阅读幽默页面时使用了更高比例的高抽象额外文本话语 (ETU)。在研究 3 中，41 位家长给 18 至 24 个月大的幼儿阅读了一本幽默或非幽默的书。阅读幽默书籍的父母做出了更多的 ETU，这些 ETU 编码为一种特定形式的高抽象：鼓励对先前话语的怀疑。因此，分享幽默书籍增加了幼儿接触高抽象和基于信念的语言的机会。
