Humor and causal understanding: building bridges through cognitive functioning

摘要

This article presents findings of a pilot study on the relation between comprehension of humor and causal understanding in early childhood. Twenty children (aged between 3 to 5 years) were presented with eight single frame cartoons with no captions, which depicted possible and impossible incongruities.Results showed that when asked to choose among three choices –incongruent, congruent, and neutral– to compose the picture they thought was funnier, most of children selected the incongruent choice. Analyses of verbal production before all choices showed that incongruity triggered more high order cognitive functioning when compared with two other choices. Moreover, children offered varied reasons to explain possible incongruities; while they tended to reject impossible violations, sometimes by proposing alternative solutions in order ‘to adjust’ the situation to physical regularity. Findings suggest that pictorial humor constitutes an appropriate methodological resource for exploring young children’s cognitive functioning; especially in regard to the relations between their comprehension of humor and physical causal understanding.