Infant humor perception from 3- to 6-months and attachment at one year

Abstract

Infancy is a critical time for the development of secure attachment, which is facilitated by emotionally synchronous interactions with parents. Humor development, which includes shared laughter and joint attention to an event, emerges concurrently with attachment, but little is known regarding the relationship, if any, between humor development and attachment in the first year. Thirty 3-month-old infants were videoed at home each month until they were 6-months old while their parents attempted to amuse them. Frequency of infants’ smiles and laughs served as a measure of “state humor”, and the smiling/laughing subscale of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised served as a measure of “trait humor”. State and trait humor were not correlated. Lower trait humor as 6 months predicted higher attachment security on the Attachment Q-sort at 12-months (r=. 46), suggesting that less good-humored infants elicit greater parental engagement, which works to the benefit of attachment, or vice versa. Future studies should examine the importance of smiling and laughter as they relate to other developmental phenomena in the first year.

Laughing matters: Infant humor in the context of parental affect

“…Humor can reveal infants’ detection of incongruity (Forabosco, 1992; Hoicka & Akhtar, 2011) and their possible understanding of simple deception (Reddy, 1991), and has implications for some of the major social-emotional milestones of infancy including attachment (Mireault et al, 2012a), social referencing (Mireault et al, 2012b; Mireault et al, 2014), and self-regulation (Walden, 1993). Yet very little is known about how infants come to perceive an event as amusing.…”

“…For example, children with autism are more likely to exhibit “solitary laughter”, meaning that they laugh when alone in response to stimuli that do not typically evoke laughter in others, rarely laugh in response to others’ laughter unless attempting to echo the sound, and rarely attempt to intentionally make others laugh (Reddy et al, 2002). Since humor may promote qualities that are associated with relationship satisfaction among adults including shared pleasurable affect, emotional intimacy, trust and empathy, some research has suggested that infant humor may be related to attachment (Mireault, Sparrow, Poutre, Perdue, & Macke, 2012a). …”

An Overview of Humor

“…Finally, humor research can shed light on emotional developmental milestones like attachment (Mireault et al 2012b). In order to promote secure attachment, caregivers are advised to interact with infants in ways that are positive, responsive and synchronous.…”

Social looking, social referencing and humor perception in 6- and-12-month-old infants

“…Infants this age also attempt to elicit laughter in others and try to maintain humorous interactions that are in progress (Loizou, 2005). These observations of infant humor have implications for understanding theory of mind (Hoicka & Akhtar, 2011; Hoicka & Gattis, 2008; Reddy, 2008), attachment (Mireault, Sparrow, Poutre, Perdue, & Macke, 2012), and spectrum disorders (Reddy, Williams, & Vaughan 2002). For example, Reddy (2001) reports that 8- to 11-month-olds engage in simple teasing like offering and withdrawing an object, an early form of deception and an indication that infants may hold more understanding of others' minds than is typically assumed.…”