humor in children: a nonverbal humor test

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JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 7,267-276 (1986) Humor in Children: A Nonverbal Humor Test LARUE ALLEN University of Maryland EDWARD ZIGLER Yale University This study presents results of the investigation of reliability and validity of the Chil- dren’s Nonverbal Humor Test. Three hundred and seventy-eight children, ages 5 to 14 were studied. Item-total correlations, split half reliobilities, test-retest reliabilities and correlations with IQ formed the basis for determining general construct validity and stability of the measure. The measure demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity. Age and gender were found to influence the ability to construct a humor response. The measure was found to be most useful for measuring humor responses in children oges 5 to 10. A consensus exists that having a good sense of humor is commendable and that humor is a valuable aid to an individual’s coping and adaptation. The construc- tive role of humor in everyday functioning has been noted by many investigators (Allen-Washington, 1980; Brown & Bryant, 1983; Cousins, 1979; Goodman, 1983; Levine, 1979; McGhee, 1979; Mendelsohn, 1966; Robinson, 1977). Gar- mezy, Masten, and Tellegen (1984) have suggested that the sense of humor may be an aspect of competence which tempers stressful experiences or enhances competent functioning in a child under stress. Two broad major approaches to the understanding of humor can be identified, the psychodynamic and the cog- nitive. The psychodynamic approach stems from Freud (1960) and places special emphasis on how the theme of the humor stimulus interacts with the individual’s current conflicts and psychological defenses. The cognitive approach may be seen most clearly in the work of Zigler and his colleagues (Allen-Washington, 1980; Zigler, Levine, & Gould, 1966a, 1966b, 1967). Central to this approach is the view that independent of the individual’s psychodynamics, a basic determi- nant of humor appreciation are those cognitive processes which make it possible for the person to comprehend the humor stimulus. Within this approach, humor appreciation is viewed as a conflict-free act. Humor is often employed as a measure of mood or sense of well-being. For Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to LaRue Allen, Psychology Depart- ment, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. 267

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Page 1: Humor in children: A nonverbal humor test

JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 7,267-276 (1986)

Humor in Children: A Nonverbal Humor Test

LARUE ALLEN

University of Maryland

EDWARD ZIGLER

Yale University

This study presents results of the investigation of reliability and validity of the Chil- dren’s Nonverbal Humor Test. Three hundred and seventy-eight children, ages 5 to 14 were studied. Item-total correlations, split half reliobilities, test-retest reliabilities and correlations with IQ formed the basis for determining general construct validity

and stability of the measure. The measure demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity. Age and gender were found to influence the ability to construct a humor response. The measure was found to be most useful for measuring humor responses in children oges 5 to 10.

A consensus exists that having a good sense of humor is commendable and that humor is a valuable aid to an individual’s coping and adaptation. The construc- tive role of humor in everyday functioning has been noted by many investigators (Allen-Washington, 1980; Brown & Bryant, 1983; Cousins, 1979; Goodman, 1983; Levine, 1979; McGhee, 1979; Mendelsohn, 1966; Robinson, 1977). Gar- mezy, Masten, and Tellegen (1984) have suggested that the sense of humor may be an aspect of competence which tempers stressful experiences or enhances competent functioning in a child under stress. Two broad major approaches to the understanding of humor can be identified, the psychodynamic and the cog- nitive. The psychodynamic approach stems from Freud (1960) and places special emphasis on how the theme of the humor stimulus interacts with the individual’s current conflicts and psychological defenses. The cognitive approach may be seen most clearly in the work of Zigler and his colleagues (Allen-Washington, 1980; Zigler, Levine, & Gould, 1966a, 1966b, 1967). Central to this approach is the view that independent of the individual’s psychodynamics, a basic determi- nant of humor appreciation are those cognitive processes which make it possible for the person to comprehend the humor stimulus. Within this approach, humor appreciation is viewed as a conflict-free act.

Humor is often employed as a measure of mood or sense of well-being. For

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to LaRue Allen, Psychology Depart-

ment, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.

267

Page 2: Humor in children: A nonverbal humor test

268 ALLEN AND ZIGLER

example, as McGhee (1979) has noted, we assume that when a child is distressed or depressed he/she is less likely to laugh or smile (a case that also holds for adults) (Levine, 1969).

In addition to an upsurge of theoretical and empirical efforts, the recent increase in the interest in humor may be seen in: (a) the appearance of a hand- book on humor (McGhee & Goldstein, 1983), and (b) the annual international conference on humor (e.g., Chapman & Foot, 1977). This renaissance of interest in humor is particularly marked in regard to humor in children (e.g., Allen- Washington, 1980; McGhee, 1979; Pinderhughes & Zigler, 1984; Wolfenstein, 1978).

The study of children’s humor has been handicapped by the failure of workers to develop and employ a standard measure of humor with known psychometric properties. The typical procedure is to arbitrarily select a collection of humor stimuli (usually cartoons) and use each of these collections in a single study involving very small samples of children (Bird, 1925; Jones, 1970; King & King, 1973; McGhee, 1976a; Rothbart, 1976; Shultz, 1976; Walker & Wash- bum, 1919; Williams, 1946). The only cartoon set used in more than one study is the Children’s Mirth Response Test (Allen & Zigler, 1985; Zigler, Levine, & Gould, 1966a, 1966b, 1967). A criticism of this test, as well as other cartoon collections, is that they represent a relatively passive indicator of a child’s sense of humor, and do not capture the child’s more active efforts to construct humor.

Children’s humor research poses a special problem in regard to the child’s comprehension of the humor stimulus. If a child does not laugh when presented a humor stimulus, we do not know whether this is due to attenuated affect or to the child’s inability to comprehend the humor stimulus. This issue becomes particu- larly troublesome when investigating the humor responses of very young chil- dren and/or children with very limited verbal ability.

A promising measure to assess a child’s ability to construct humor was re- cently developed by Krents (1982) in a study of humor in deaf and normal hearing children (age 8). On this measure a child demonstrates comprehension of humor by completing a humor stimulus (i.e., a four-panel cartoon) with either a humorous or nonhumorous final panel choice. The primary purpose of the pre- sent investigation was to assess the reliability and validity of this Children’s Nonverbal Humor Test across a relatively wide age range (ages 5 to 14). Given the work of Zigler and his colleagues, one obvious indicator of the validity of the measure is an increase in the ability to construct humor (i.e., select the humorous ending) with increasing age. This same line of reasoning generates the expecta- tion that performance on this measure would be positively related to IQ, in- asmuch as chronological age (CA) and IQ combine to determine mental age (MA), which is our single best general indicator of a child’s cognitive level.

A secondary goal of the present study was the examination of the role of gender and ethnicity in children’s humor. The literature on gender effects in children’s humor has proven inconsistent (Allen-Washington, 1980; Brodzinsky,

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NONVERBAL HUMOR TEST 269

1977; McGhee, 1976b). Ethnicity effects in children’s humor have yet to be examined.

METHOD

The Children’s Nonverbal Humor Test The test has 24 items that were selected to reflect a range of funniness and cartoon themes. Each cartoon has four frames. The cartoons were selected from magazines, newspapers, and humor anthologies. They depicted a mixture of themes and humor techniques, including incongruity, slapstick, superiority and other forms of aggression, dependency, and nonsense humor. The last frame of each strip was separated from the series and presented to the child with two other possible endings. One ending, which would indicate no comprehension of the humor situation constructed by the cartoonist (score = 0), presents an illogical or inappropriate end to the story. A second choice, indicating partial comprehen- sion (score = l), depicts a logical or sensible ending to the story, but not one that gives the story a clearly humorous ending. The third choice, indicating full understanding of the humor situation (score = 2), was the original final frame of the cartoon sequence (see Figure 1 for a sample item).

Subjects The subjects were 378 black and white boys and girls ages 5 to 14. Approx- imately equal proportions of black and white males and females were represented in each age group. Children were recruited from daycare centers, after school recreation programs, private and parochial schools, summer camps and Girl Scout troops. This recruitment procedure was used in order to sample responses of children from a variety of settings and a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds.

Examiners The examiners were 20 advanced undergraduate students (19 females, 1 male; 17 white, 3 black). The first author trained the examiners in presenting and scoring the humor test.’

Procedure The children were examined at the sites from which they were recruited. The examiner sat across from the child and presented the 24-item Children’s Nonver- bal Humor Test to all children in the same order, one cartoon at a time. For each item, the child was shown the first three frames of the cartoon and was asked to select from three alternative pictures, the one that would “make this very fun-

‘Details on administering and scoring the Children’s Nonverbal Humor Test may be obtained

from the first author.

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270 ALLEN AND ZIGLER

FIG. 1. Sample item from the Childrens’ Nonverbal Humor Test with

three of the four original cartoon frames on the left, and fourth-frame

choices on the right which would be scored (top to bottom), partial (1

point), full (2 points), and no (0 points) comprehension.

ny.” The child was given two unscored examples to guarantee that he/she comprehended the task. Selecting the ending constructed by the cartoonist was awarded a score of 2. The logical but nonhumorous ending was given a score of I and the totally illogical ending was given a score of 0. The comprehension scores could thus range from 0 to 48. Following the humor test, each child was adminis- tered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised.

RESULTS

Preliminary analyses revealed no systematic variations in any of the measures associated with individual examiner effects or settings at which the children were recruited. These variations will therefore be ignored in the findings presented below.

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NONVERBAL HUMOR TEST 271

The Scoring System In view of the wide prevalence of nonsense humor among children, the rationale for the scoring system employed in the humor test was examined. The argument could be made that selection of the nonsensical foil indicated greater appreciation of humor than did the selection of the logical foil. The thrust of this argument generates two empirical tests: (1) if the zero score represents humor ability, such zero scores should increase with age; (2) if zero scores reflect greater humor ability, these scores should more frequently be found among children who re- ceived the complete humor score of 2 points.

The number of 0, 1, and 2 scores for the subjects at each age are presented in Table 1. As can be seen, unlike the 2s, the 0 scores decrease with age until the 12- 13 ages, and then show an increase at ages 14 and 15. Zero responses thus appear less indicative of funniness until the two oldest ages. This probably reflects a ceiling effect in which, as the test becomes extremely easy, the child prefers to make a more idiosyncratic, challenging task from the stimuli presented

him/her. The median number of scores of 2 was computed for each age. The number of

scores of 1 and 0 associated with being above or below the median in 2 scores are also presented in Table 1. As can be seen, at no age did subjects who gave a preponderance of 2 scores give more 0 scores than 1 scores. Nevertheless, scores of 1, like scores of 0, show a decrease with age. It is difficult to conclude that the 0, 1, and 2 scores represent linear points on a humor continuum. This suggests an alternative scoring system in which the child only receives credits on cartoons fully comprehended, that is, responses rated as a 2. Such a scoring system would result in scores highly correlated with the scores obtained with the present scor- ing system. This a priori scoring system was employed in the statistical analyses conducted. Maintaining this scoring system has one advantage over the “two scores only” system in that 0 scores (namely a nonsensical response) are interest- ing in their own right.

Effects of Age, Gender, and Ethnicity The mean IQ for the males was 106.0 (white males = 112.2, black males = 98.7); the mean IQ for females was 102.0 (white females = 105.3, black females = 96.6). Males had significantly higher IQ scores than females, F(l, 350) = 6.44, p < .Oi, and whites had higher IQ scores than blacks, F( 1, 350) = 53.5, p < .OOOl. Given this pattern of findings, IQ was used as a covariate in all subsequent analyses of variance. Subjects’ scores on the humor measure are presented in Table 2.

An Age (4 levels) X Gender (2) X Ethnicity (2) ANOVA with IQ as the covariate yielded a significant main effect for age, F(3,361) = 53.95,~ < .OOOl, -and a significant Age X Gender interaction, F(3,361) = 3.16, p < .05. Post hoc analysis showed that all pairs of means across age were significantly different, and increased with age. In the Age X Gender interaction, post hoc analysis showed

Page 6: Humor in children: A nonverbal humor test

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Page 7: Humor in children: A nonverbal humor test

NONVERBAL HUMOR TEST 273

TABLE 2

Mean Scores (and Standard Deviations) on the Humor Test by Subjects’ Age, Gender, and Ethnicity

Age White

Girl

Black White

Boy

Black

5-6 36.3 (5.2) 7-8 37.8 (5.2) 9-10 41.0 (4.7)

2 11 43.0 (3.8)

Note. Maximum score = 48.

34.3 (6.9) 34.5 (6.3) 29.5 (6.1) 37.0 (5.9) 39.5 (7.0) 38.7 (5.0) 39.6 (6.4) 41.1 (3.7) 40.1 (4.6)

42.7 (4.0) 43.8 (3.2) 41.5 (5.0)

that at age 516, girls scored higher than boys, whereas at age 718, boys scored higher than girls. There were no gender differences among the two remaining age groups.

Psychometric Characteristics of the Test For the total sample, mean responses to the individual cartoons ranged from 1.20 (SD = .66) to 1.91 (SD = .36). Corrected item-total correlations ranged from .I7 to .5 1. For the sample as a whole, split half reliability for the odd and even responses was .74; coefficient alpha was .78. At each age level, coefficient alpha and split half reliability were in the moderate to high range (.51 to .78) except at ages 11 and 13. Alpha was below this range for age 11 (.24); split half reliability was below this range at .08 and .38 for ages 11 and 13, respectively.

Test-retest reliability of the Childrens’ Nonverbal Humor Test was assessed by the administering the cartoons to 21 children in sessions 2 to 3 weeks apart. Correlation between scores on the two testings was .70. The mean score for Time 1 was 1.45; mean score for Time 2 was 1.54. Dependent t tests, for which p values were multipled by 24 to correct for the number of comparisons (Hays, 1981), showed no significant difference in means from Time 1 to Time 2.

To test the prediction that the score on the humor test would be positively related to IQ, the PPVT scores were correlated with the overall Humor Test score. The resulting correlation of .42 was highly significant 0, < .OOOl).

DISCUSSION

It is clear that humor is a multifaceted phenomenon with complex determinants (Chapman & Foot, 1977; McGhee & Chapman, 1980). The humor test examined in the present study assesses the child’s ability to comprehend the requirements of a stimulus’ “being funny” and to utilize this understanding in the construction of humor. This cognitive orientation towards humor may be juxtaposed with an affect-orientation in which measurement is directed at the child’s affect in re- sponse to humor stimuli (e.g., the degree of overt mirth expressed).

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274 ALLEN AND ZIGLER

The measure examined does appear to be a reliable and valid indicator of the ability which the test was meant to assess. The test was found to have adequate split half and test-retest reliability, as well as a considerable degree of internal consistency. In regard to validity, as predicted, responses to the test were found to be positively related to both age and IQ. It should be noted that this prediction applies only to humor comprehension, and not to humor appreciation scores. Attempts to relate IQ, or age and humor responsiveness have led to inconsistent results, primarily due to the lack of commonly accepted measures across studies. The availability of the Childrens’ Nonverbal Humor Test will make such cross- study comparisons more valid and interpretable.

The reliability and internal consistency of the measure were found to be somewhat attenuated at ages 11 and above. These attenuated test characteristics were not found to be due to ceiling effects. It should be noted that this period of adolescence was identified by Piaget as the period of onset of formal operations, and by Elkind (1974) as a period of cognitive reorganization. During such a developmental phase, the child can certainly generate more cognitive hypotheses than can the younger child. This should result in solutions to the test’s demands being more idiosyncratic at this upper age level. As more personal and idiosyn- cratic responses to the test increase, the reliability of the test must decrease. In view of such considerations, the test is probably best used in the age range 5 to 10.

While no main effects for gender were found, gender was found to interact with age. Although this interaction was not particularly robust it does indicate that humor researchers should continue to assess the role of gender as a moder- ator variable in children’s humor responses. Previous efforts to study the influ- ence of gender on humor responses have been consistent with the results of this test of humor comprehension. However, studies of humor appreciation have provided evidence which suggests that females’ funniness ratings are more likely to correlate with their emotional expression (facial mirth) than boys’ (Leventhal & Mace, 1970). School aged girls laugh less frequently than boys in naturalistic settings. No differences have been obtained in laboratory research. Future re- search, using similar methods and materials across settings, can contribute to increased understanding of the relationship between the development of affect and cognition through studies of influences on affective and cognitive dimen- sions of humor responses for boys versus girls, and across levels of development.

Neither main effects nor interactions involving ethnicity were found. None were expected given the heterogeneity of content of the cartoons. In the future, standardized sets of stimuli depicting specific combinations of themes, and char- acters of different ages, ethnic groups and genders, should be developed to explore the impact of salience of cartoon content on humor responses (Allen, 1985).

It should also be noted that the present instrument is a measure of receptive cartoon comprehension, and not a measure of the ability to generate humor or the

Page 9: Humor in children: A nonverbal humor test

NONVERBAL HUMOR TEST 275

comprehension of humor involving specific themes. A further limitation of the test is that it is nonverbal in nature, and thus cannot increase our understanding of verbally oriented humor.

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