Peer Play in the Child HUmour Study (CHUMS)

Observing children’s play with peers and investigating the role of humour in their development and wellbeing.

Early years

From a young age, children love experiencing and sharing unexpected or surprising events. Within the first six months, many babies are amused by games of peekaboo and start clowning around with their caregivers.

As children develop, their humour becomes increasingly varied and complex. Toddlers playfully bend the rules, mislabel objects – like calling a dog a cat – and say nonsense words like “Googoobajoo”.

Preschool and beyond

Beyond the preschool years, children begin to play with words in more complex ways. They make up and tell riddles and jokes, even if sometimes the delivery of their punchlines varies. Even though older children share more complex humour with language, our research shows they still enjoy simple actions that make others laugh.

Sharing humour is enjoyable, but it also serves important and dynamic social and emotional functions. As well as being one of the building blocks of social relationships, humour often results in positive emotions and laughter. Some research has shown that certain styles of humour are associated with other measures of wellbeing, such as loneliness, social competence, and number of mutual friends (James & Fox, 2018).

Project aims

In this work, we aimed to observe children’s play with peers and investigate the role of humour in children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development and their wellbeing. Our key questions focus on:

the nature of children’s play in peer relationships
the role of humorous play in child wellbeing
the links between humorous play and children’s developing social understanding skills

This project uses observation, online child assessments, and multi-informant questionnaires in a longitudinal study design. We aim to create a better understanding of specific features of children’s humour, like play, that serve as a window to understanding their development.

Funding

The Child HUmour Study (CHUMS) was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council New Investigator award to Dr Amy Paine.

See Children’s Humour with Classmates is associated with their Developing Understanding of Minds for our latest findings.

Contacts

This project is in collaboration with Dr Salim Hashmi from King’s College London, Dr Elian Fink from University of Sussex, Dr Nina Howe from Concordia University, and Professor Peter Mitchell from University of Bradford.