CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN
COGNITION & NEUROSCIENCES/ConnexConnex

During my PhD, we studied how humor influences infant learning and what mechanisms might explain this effect. Previous work by Esseily et al. (2016) showed that 18-month-old infants who laughed during a humorous demonstration of a tool-use task—retrieving an out-of-reach toy with a rake—learned the action more effectively than those who did not laugh or saw a neutral demonstration. We extended this to 119 infants aged 14 to 22 months and confirmed that humor supports learning at these ages. In our first study, we combined behavioral and physiological data (via an ankle-worn bracelet) to examine whether changes in arousal (i.e., the physiological activation associated with autonomic nervous system activity) could explain this effect. Infants exposed to the humorous demonstration—and who appeared calmer and more focused—tended to learn better, suggesting that humor may play a role in sharpening attention. Since humor involves incongruity and triggers surprise, we hypothesized that surprise might contribute to the positive effect of humor on learning. To explore this, we first needed to identify the most relevant indicator of infants’ surprise in social contexts. We conducted a methodological study with 132 infants (aged 14–22 months) to determine which behavioral and physiological markers—including automated facial expression analysis—reliably reflect surprise. Social gazes toward the experimenter during the demonstration emerged as the most robust indicator. In a third study, we exposed 80 infants aged 17 to 22 months to humorous, neutral, or surprising (but non-humorous) demonstrations. Our results showed that infants in the surprising condition learned better than those in the neutral group, but those exposed to the humorous demonstration outperformed both other groups. These findings suggest that while surprise may contribute to the positive effect of humor on infant learning, it does not fully explain it. Positive emotions, affiliative bonding, and focused attention will likely work together to make humor a particularly powerful driver of learning in infancy.

The meeting will take place in Bertelson room (Bat. D, 10th floor, Solbosch campus, Ixelles) or online at the link bit.ly/42NjIpa