Do individuals with autism lack a sense of humor? A study of humor comprehension, appreciation, and styles among high school students with autism

‘I accept my son for who he is – he has incredible character and personality’: fathers’ positive experiences of parenting children with autism

“…(Dyck and Holtzman 2013). This characteristic has often been identified as extremely limited or lacking within children with autism (Wu et al 2014). The ways in which fathers and mothers share humour with their children with autism may be an important avenue for future research, since such a process seems an important aspect of both personal and interpersonal development.…”

Effectiveness of humor training among adolescents with autism

“…Many studies show that individuals with autism cannot integrate separate messages to complete information and to understand another person's mental state due to weak central coherence (Frith, 1989) and deficits in theory of mind (Baron-Cohen et al, 1985;2001); hence, they have difficulty in understanding humorous content (Emerich, et al, 2003;Samson and Hegenloh, 2010;Samson et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2014). However, this study also found that, regarding the nonsense humor photos, ASD subjects could comprehend the funny point without using logical thinking and enjoy the same pleasure as normal subjects (Emerich et al, 2003).…”

“…However, this study also found that, regarding the nonsense humor photos, ASD subjects could comprehend the funny point without using logical thinking and enjoy the same pleasure as normal subjects (Emerich et al, 2003). Additionally, Wu et al (2014) first used incongruityresolution humor and nonsense verbal jokes as their material to investigate differences in humor comprehension and appreciation among joke types for individuals with autism. Their results indicated that individuals with autism could still appraise a nonsense joke at the same level of funniness that controls did, even if individuals with autism did not understand the content of the jokes well.…”

“…However, the condition of lacking a sense of humor differs among mental disorders. There is a positive correlation between melancholy trend and self-defeating humor (Martin et al, 2003), but there are no significant differences regarding self-defeating humor between autistic and normal people (Samson et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2014). This difference indicates that previous successful interventions might not be suitable for autism, and furthermore, there is no humor-training program for autism.…”

“…This difference indicates that previous successful interventions might not be suitable for autism, and furthermore, there is no humor-training program for autism. The present study, therefore, aims to develop a training course for individuals with autism according to previous findings of humor behavior among individuals with autism (Wu et al, 2014;2015), and it investigates the effectiveness of the humor training course by comparing changes in humor appreciation and comprehension.…”