Humour in Childhood: Pathways to Better Wellbeing
Lead Research Organisation:
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
"A, B, C, D, E, F, R!" (Louise, age 6)
"H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O... PEE! Get it? Pee!" (Chris, age 8)
This interaction between siblings shows that humour is a central part of children's close, playful, and warm interactions. Humour may be related to positive outcomes later in development, as certain styles of humour are linked to better wellbeing across the lifespan. Humorous children may be better able to cope with stress and worries, be more able to build positive social relationships, and be better able to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. To date, there is no systematic study of the ways in which positive outcomes arise from humour in childhood, which is surprising considering there is good reason to suppose humour in childhood is associated with better wellbeing.
We aim to explore the relationship between humour and other core social and cognitive childhood abilities, and to understand pathways by which humour may attenuate the negative effect of stressful life experiences on children's wellbeing. This investigation will be conducted within the context of a new multi-method, multi-informant longitudinal study, where children between the ages of seven and nine will be assessed over three time points: At Time 1 (7-8 years) caregivers and teachers will complete online questionnaires about children's family circumstances, their wellbeing, and any recent stressful life events (e.g., the passing of a loved one, separation from a close family member). At Time 2 (6 months later) the children will be assessed at school with a battery of tasks that assess how well they get along with others, their understanding of others' minds, as well as their language and memory abilities. They will also be video-recorded with a classmate to examine how they spontaneously produce humour during free play. We will examine the quantity and the kinds of humour children produce within this interaction, such as nonsense words (e.g., gobbledegook), clowning about (e.g., silly dancing) and talking about disgusting or forbidden topics (e.g., bathroom humour). At Time 3 (6 months after Time 2), primary caregivers and teachers will be contacted again to complete more online questionnaires about children's later wellbeing.
This new study will provide a rich data set, within which we will answer the following questions: To what degree is humour in childhood related to (1) children's ability to understand the minds of others and (2) their social competence? 3) To what extent does children's humour alter the impact of stressful life experiences on their later wellbeing? To answer questions 1 and 2, we will harness data from the child assessments at Time 2. We will firstly investigate how children's humour is related to tasks that assess how they understand others' minds, and we will secondly investigate the links between children's observed humour and how well children get along with others. To answer the final question, we will investigate how children's humour at Time 2 is associated with children's later wellbeing at T3 (rated by caregivers and teachers). We will investigate pathways between children's stressful life experiences at Time 1, their humour at Time 2 and their wellbeing at Time 3.
Child wellbeing is a major topic of research, and is of considerable public and government interest, given that the UK is ranked amongst the lowest of developed and European countries for child wellbeing. This project will provide new and important knowledge of humour as a driver of positive or negative change in development. The findings from this study will benefit researchers in developmental psychology, they will inform policy and will provide new knowledge for the general public, educators and clinicians concerned with child development. As such, we plan an exciting and diverse series of impact-related activities to ensure the findings reach a range of academic and non-academic audiences.
"H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O... PEE! Get it? Pee!" (Chris, age 8)
This interaction between siblings shows that humour is a central part of children's close, playful, and warm interactions. Humour may be related to positive outcomes later in development, as certain styles of humour are linked to better wellbeing across the lifespan. Humorous children may be better able to cope with stress and worries, be more able to build positive social relationships, and be better able to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. To date, there is no systematic study of the ways in which positive outcomes arise from humour in childhood, which is surprising considering there is good reason to suppose humour in childhood is associated with better wellbeing.
We aim to explore the relationship between humour and other core social and cognitive childhood abilities, and to understand pathways by which humour may attenuate the negative effect of stressful life experiences on children's wellbeing. This investigation will be conducted within the context of a new multi-method, multi-informant longitudinal study, where children between the ages of seven and nine will be assessed over three time points: At Time 1 (7-8 years) caregivers and teachers will complete online questionnaires about children's family circumstances, their wellbeing, and any recent stressful life events (e.g., the passing of a loved one, separation from a close family member). At Time 2 (6 months later) the children will be assessed at school with a battery of tasks that assess how well they get along with others, their understanding of others' minds, as well as their language and memory abilities. They will also be video-recorded with a classmate to examine how they spontaneously produce humour during free play. We will examine the quantity and the kinds of humour children produce within this interaction, such as nonsense words (e.g., gobbledegook), clowning about (e.g., silly dancing) and talking about disgusting or forbidden topics (e.g., bathroom humour). At Time 3 (6 months after Time 2), primary caregivers and teachers will be contacted again to complete more online questionnaires about children's later wellbeing.
This new study will provide a rich data set, within which we will answer the following questions: To what degree is humour in childhood related to (1) children's ability to understand the minds of others and (2) their social competence? 3) To what extent does children's humour alter the impact of stressful life experiences on their later wellbeing? To answer questions 1 and 2, we will harness data from the child assessments at Time 2. We will firstly investigate how children's humour is related to tasks that assess how they understand others' minds, and we will secondly investigate the links between children's observed humour and how well children get along with others. To answer the final question, we will investigate how children's humour at Time 2 is associated with children's later wellbeing at T3 (rated by caregivers and teachers). We will investigate pathways between children's stressful life experiences at Time 1, their humour at Time 2 and their wellbeing at Time 3.
Child wellbeing is a major topic of research, and is of considerable public and government interest, given that the UK is ranked amongst the lowest of developed and European countries for child wellbeing. This project will provide new and important knowledge of humour as a driver of positive or negative change in development. The findings from this study will benefit researchers in developmental psychology, they will inform policy and will provide new knowledge for the general public, educators and clinicians concerned with child development. As such, we plan an exciting and diverse series of impact-related activities to ensure the findings reach a range of academic and non-academic audiences.
Planned Impact
Conceptual Impact. This project will contribute new understanding and knowledge to the general public, educators, clinicians, and policy makers. Our investigation of the links between children's humour and other markers of healthy child development (e.g., understanding of minds, executive function, language ability) will provide new knowledge about individual differences in an important feature of children's daily interactions. Our longitudinal analysis of the effect children's humour has on the relationship between stressful life experiences and children's wellbeing will add to understanding of personal characteristics of the child that may contribute to better child outcomes. For the general public, educators and clinicians, we aim to increase awareness of humour as a key feature of child development. Understanding how humour fosters child wellbeing in the face of adversity will benefit society generally, enabling better education, wellbeing, and productivity, making our society better adjusted, more prosperous and harmonious. Educational and clinical psychologists' increased awareness of children's production of humour will inform their assessment of children's social and emotional development.
Instrumental Impact. Our investigation of the links between humour in childhood and children's wellbeing will generate findings that will contribute to the development of interventions and policy aimed at transforming children and young peoples' wellbeing. We plan both short and long-term change as a result of this project. In the lifecycle of this project, we aim to encourage the view that humour is considered within children's activities; this will be achieved both by sharing our findings with parents and teachers and by developing comedy sessions within the 'Little Lakesiders' theatre group on the University of Nottingham campus. In the longer term, our dissemination of findings within internal seminars both nationally (UK) and internationally (Canada) to educational and clinical professionals will contribute to how practice and service provision is shaped. Given that the Senate of the British Psychological Society voted for the psychological wellbeing of children and young people to be the top policy priority in 2019, a vital component of our plan for impact is to reach policy-makers; our communication with government officials and their representatives will be empowered by our partnership with CBBC presenter, Ben Shires, and with representatives from Comic Relief.
Capacity Building. The project will be a product of national and international collaborative relationships between academics at institutions within the UK and Canada. Our plans are to build links between our collaborators and our non-academic beneficiaries (e.g., students on doctoral programmes and nursery teachers) at an international level to increase awareness of the project and the findings globally. 'Little Lakesiders' and Oaklands Primary School will assist in the co-production of knowledge and co-design of the study in the early stages of the project. Our activities with these groups in the early stages will provide teachers, professionals, parents, and children with a voice to steer the project. They will provide an ongoing source of insight into how best to realise our plans for impact for the general public and they will have a key role in piloting our short-term instrumental impact.
This project will provide numerous opportunities for the PI and other researchers on the project to strengthen their existing collaborations and to create new partnerships with academics and non-academics. The PI will gain organisational, leadership, engagement, and research skills and the RA will benefit from support and mentoring from the PI. Broadly, this project will lead to the creation and maintenance of long-term partnerships both within and beyond research institutions on a national and international level.
Instrumental Impact. Our investigation of the links between humour in childhood and children's wellbeing will generate findings that will contribute to the development of interventions and policy aimed at transforming children and young peoples' wellbeing. We plan both short and long-term change as a result of this project. In the lifecycle of this project, we aim to encourage the view that humour is considered within children's activities; this will be achieved both by sharing our findings with parents and teachers and by developing comedy sessions within the 'Little Lakesiders' theatre group on the University of Nottingham campus. In the longer term, our dissemination of findings within internal seminars both nationally (UK) and internationally (Canada) to educational and clinical professionals will contribute to how practice and service provision is shaped. Given that the Senate of the British Psychological Society voted for the psychological wellbeing of children and young people to be the top policy priority in 2019, a vital component of our plan for impact is to reach policy-makers; our communication with government officials and their representatives will be empowered by our partnership with CBBC presenter, Ben Shires, and with representatives from Comic Relief.
Capacity Building. The project will be a product of national and international collaborative relationships between academics at institutions within the UK and Canada. Our plans are to build links between our collaborators and our non-academic beneficiaries (e.g., students on doctoral programmes and nursery teachers) at an international level to increase awareness of the project and the findings globally. 'Little Lakesiders' and Oaklands Primary School will assist in the co-production of knowledge and co-design of the study in the early stages of the project. Our activities with these groups in the early stages will provide teachers, professionals, parents, and children with a voice to steer the project. They will provide an ongoing source of insight into how best to realise our plans for impact for the general public and they will have a key role in piloting our short-term instrumental impact.
This project will provide numerous opportunities for the PI and other researchers on the project to strengthen their existing collaborations and to create new partnerships with academics and non-academics. The PI will gain organisational, leadership, engagement, and research skills and the RA will benefit from support and mentoring from the PI. Broadly, this project will lead to the creation and maintenance of long-term partnerships both within and beyond research institutions on a national and international level.
Publications
Hashmi S
(2021)
Seven-year-olds' references to internal states when playing with toy figures and a video game.
in Infant and child development
Hashmi S
(2022)
Engaged in play: Seven-year-olds' engagement with the play frame when playing with toy figures and their engagement with the fictional world of a video game
in Cognitive Development
Hashmi S
(2021)
Doll play prompts social thinking and social talking: Representations of internal state language in the brain
in Developmental Science
Paine A
(2021)
"Goosebump man. That's funny!": Humor with siblings and friends from early to middle childhood
in Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
Paine A
(2020)
"Where's your bum brain?" Humor, social understanding, and sibling relationship quality in early childhood
in Social Development
| Description | Children's play with peers may be protective against the development of emotional and behavioural problems in childhood. It has been theorised that peer play may protect against mental health difficulties by providing a context where children develop social understanding skills that are crucial to positive social interactions, such as recognising emotions and understanding the mental states of others (Zhao & Gibson, 2023). More specifically, engaging in humorous play may give children opportunities to deploy their social cognitive skills. To successfully engage in humorous play, a child must demonstrate understanding of the emotional climate of their social interactions and of what others may find to be amusing. However, whether a child's humour production may protect against the development of mental health difficulties, and whether this may occur via social cognitive skills has never been investigated. The planned data collection activities in this project were delayed due to social restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, while we adapted some of our original plans and waited for data collection to become safe, we began to answer some our questions using rich existing datasets with national and international collaborators. The network of colleagues who worked on this have included collaborators at King's College London, Concordia University, McGill University, and the State University of New York at Geneseo. In one study achieved as a result of the work funded through this award (Paine et al., 2021), we wanted to examine change and continuity in children's production of humour across different child-child relationships from early to middle childhood. We harnessed data collected by collaborators at State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo. In a sample of 65 children, we harnessed video data of play interactions and systematically coded children's humour production with their close friend and an older or young sibling when they were approximately 4 years of age, and again when they were 7 years of age. We found that children who shared humour with their sibling at age 4 were also likely to share humour with their friend at the same time point, and three years later. At age 7, children's humour with a sibling was not related to their humour with a friend, suggesting that a child's humour may become specific to each social context across development. To further understanding of children's humorous play (Paine et al., 2021), we used existing data collected by collaborators at Concordia University. These data included video recordings of 72 sibling pairs; each sibling pair included a 5-year-old child as they played with their older (average age 7 years) or their younger (average age 3 years) sibling. From these video recordings, we developed an observational coding scheme to systematically code children's production of humour (humorous play with objects, sounds, words, physical play, banter, and play with taboo themes) and their talk about minds, for example, their references to thoughts, feelings, and intentions. The children were also all individually and privately interviewed about the quality of their sibling relationship. Children who produced more humour during play with their sibling were also more likely to talk about minds. We also found that humour was associated with the children's ratings of positive rapport in the sibling relationship. We found that some of these associations were stronger according to structural features of the sibling relationship (e.g., gender composition of siblings and birth order). In another recently published study (Paine et al., 2023), we harnessed data from the Cardiff Child Development Study to investigate 110 seven-year-olds' humorous play with their younger siblings as they played with dressing up toys in the home. Children also completed a battery of social, cognitive, and emotional tasks. We found that some types of children's humour when they played with siblings, including sound play (for example, talking in a very squeaky or gruff voice) and playful teasing (such as light-hearted, playful, mischievous behaviour) was associated with children's ability to understand the emotions and thoughts of other people. We also found that children's humour with siblings was associated with how they played pretend on their own (for example, making sound effects, animating toy figures) indicating both humour and pretend play are both ways children can be imaginative. When data collection could be conducted safely, we completed our planned data collection for this project in the Child HUMour Study (CHUMS). In a diverse sample of 130 children, we collected data via online child assessment sessions (to adhere to social distancing). These sessions included tasks designed to assess social cognitive skills, children's perception of their social competence, and other skills such as receptive vocabulary and executive functioning. When social distancing restrictions lifted such that researchers could visit children in school safely (within 2 months, on average), children were video recorded as they played with a Playmobil zoo with a classmate; these recordings were transcribed and systematically coded for children's humour production. Parents and teachers completed questionnaires about the children, and one year later, 92% parents completed a follow-up questionnaire. Our preliminary findings indicate that peer play is a rich context for humour production. All children except one participant produced at least one instance of humour in the peer play session and sound play was the most common humour category produced, characterised by over-exaggerated vocalisations, silly accents, or rhythmic speech, for example, "Oh my god, there's so much meat meat meat meat meat". Coded categories often co-occurred, as exemplified by this instance of playful teasing and word play, "You missed! [Peer Name]-o-oodle!" and is highly dyadic. Our analyses indicate that production of humour in peer play is associated children's performance in social understanding tasks. These findings are currently under review for publication. Other preliminary analyses indicate that humorous play with peers is associated with social cognitive skills, and parent reports of their child's sense of humour is associated with them having fewer emotional problems (manuscript in preparation). Our work has showed that humour is an important aspect of children's social cognitive development, wellbeing, and of their intimate, close connections with others in childhood. These findings form a foundation for new and important questions to be asked about the role of humour in childhood relationships. In addition to the published and in-preparation academic papers, the findings of this study have been shared at the Japan Society for Developmental Psychology conference in 2021 and 2022, at two invited interdepartmental talks at UK universities by the Principal Investigator, at the Society for Research in Child Development Learning through Play and Imagination Conference in the United States in 2022 and the International Play Association Conference in Glasgow in 2023. The findings have featured on the Play Wales website, Playful Childhoods website, and the Play for Wales magazine. In terms of impact, we have developed new ways to raise awareness of the importance of giving children opportunities for humorous play (see Narrative Impact section). In addition to the work on humorous play, throughout this award the PI has continued to work in partnership with colleagues to investigate other features of children's play, such as imitation (Howe, Paine, et al., 2023), doll play (Hashmi, Vanderwert, Paine, et al., 2022), and video game play (Hashmi, Paine et al., 2021; 2022). The PI has also co-authored several book chapters on child relationships and a Society for Research in Child Development Monograph (Hay, Paine, et al., 2021). The grant funding has also supported the PI as she is serving as Co-Investigator on the Wales Adoption Cohort Study at Cardiff University and as Co-Director of the Neurodevelopment Assessment Unit. This has enabled the continuation of work regarding the experiences and behaviour of adopted children in the context of family life, such as their sibling relationships (Meakings, Paine, & Shelton, 2022), trajectories of mental health problems (Paine et al., 2021a; 2021b), neuropsychological profiles (Paine et al., 2021c), transdiagnostic factors such as facial emotion recognition (Paine et al., 2023), and changes family life following adoption (Paine et al., 2023). |
| Exploitation Route | Our findings from this project form a foundation for further research on humour as an important domain of child development. In this project we have further developed a novel observational coding scheme to systematically code how humour is used between children during play. This scheme will be used in our future work where we plan to investigate associations between children's humour production and other domains of their social, emotional, and cognitive development. This will also form the foundation of our investigations regarding whether humour, like play generally, could serve as a positive, protective factor against the development of mental health problems in childhood. These findings will form a platform for our own studies, but also for work by other researchers in developmental science, to further investigate the role and function of humour in childhood. These findings have relevance to the general public and to child practitioners. As such, through our programme of impact work in partnership with the national charity for children's play, Play Wales, we have disseminated the findings to practitioners and the public and we have created new educational resources that emphasise the importance of humorous play in childhood. For more information please see the Narrative Impact section. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Education Healthcare |
| URL | https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/community/our-local-community-projects/case-studies/laughing-all-the-way-to-better-wellbeing-in-childhood |
| Description | The findings from this project have relevance to the public, parents, and to child practitioners, for example, early years practitioners and clinicians. Play is crucial to children's health and wellbeing; every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts, as enshrined by Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, children's opportunities to play and connect with their peers were eroded (Children's Commissioner for Wales, 2021). Given that our research findings showed that humorous play helps children build positive, warm relationships and develop important social cognitive skills, we have drawn on this evidence to increase awareness and improve provision of humorous play. We developed the 'Giggle Games', new, freely available, and multilingual educational resources for teachers to use in the classroom. This impact project harnessing our research findings was initially conceptualised within this project and its development subsequently funded by a Cardiff University Innovation for All Civic Mission fund and by the Welsh Government. These resources were co-produced through consultations with Play Wales, the national charity for children's play, and primary school teachers from local schools in South Wales. The main aim of these resources is not to give children single opportunities to engage in humorous play (e.g., in a PSHE lesson), but to give the teaching practitioners that support them examples of how they can engage in and support playful, humorous interactions that they can apply more broadly in their practice. Giggle Games have been disseminated to over 75 organisations in the UK and internationally. Mostly the resources have been shared with local primary schools in South Wales, but they have also been requested by practitioners in Europe. Giggle Games have also been requested by child practitioners working in children's wards, hospices, and family centres. Recent funding from the Welsh Government funded the translation of the Giggle Games to French (the original kits were English-Welsh) and disseminated in Quebec, Canada. They have been integrated into the curriculum for trainee teachers at Concordia University to support students' training in playful practice and exemplify how they can integrate playful pedagogy in their practice. Our conservative estimate is that the resources have been used with > 10,000 children through the various stages of our projects. The Giggle Games have been featured in Play for Wales Magazine and the Play Wales website. They have been integrated into workshops and events at Techniquest, in local schools, in the Food and Fun Cardiff Council School Enrichment Programme, and at STEM events, e.g., Be a Scientist 2024. The importance of humorous play and the resources have also been shared at the Bridgend County Borough Council Schools Improvement Event. The resources were nominated for the International Play Association 'Right to Play' Award contributed to the evidence base for Cardiff University's National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) Engage Watermark Silver Award. Given the demand for humorous play resources by child practitioners, we are expanding this goal of increasing awareness of the importance of our research findings on humorous play into hospital settings. For children who experience hospital stays, connecting with others through play is vitally important when hospital settings are often frightening, confusing, and lonely. However, play provision in hospitals can be highly variable, and parents have called for more opportunities for children to interact and connect with others (including family and NHS staff) through play (Care Quality Commission, 2020). Therefore we are now working with our existing partner, Play Wales and new partner, Starlight, who support children to experience play during treatment, care, and recovery from illness. In this new project we will evaluate play provision in hospital settings in Wales and develop new resources to support connection via humorous play. This project has featured in Play for Wales magazine and is funded by an ESRC Harmonised Impact Accelerator Award. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Education,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal Policy & public services |
| Description | Humorous Play Training in Early Childhood and Elementary Education (BA) at Concordia University |
| Geographic Reach | North America |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | ESRC UKRI Harmonised Impact Acceleration Account: Supporting the Wellbeing of Children in Hospital with Humorous Play |
| Amount | £28,493 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2023 |
| Description | ESRC-DTP Collaborative Studentship |
| Amount | £90,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Economic and Social Research Council |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2022 |
| End | 09/2026 |
| Description | Innovation for All Civic Mission Fund |
| Amount | £7,272 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Cardiff University |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 09/2022 |
| Description | Innovation for All Public Engagement Fund |
| Amount | £7,494 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Cardiff University |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2021 |
| End | 09/2022 |
| Description | Quebec-Wales Collaboration 2022 |
| Amount | £4,678 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Government of Wales |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2023 |
| End | 03/2024 |
| Description | UKRI COVID-19 Grant Allocation (CoA) |
| Amount | £4,856 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2021 |
| End | 09/2021 |
| Description | Understanding the characteristics, pathways, and support needs of carers and children with Special Guardianship Orders |
| Amount | £326,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Nuffield Foundation |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2024 |
| End | 05/2026 |
| Description | Welsh Government |
| Amount | £30,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Government of Wales |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 11/2022 |
| End | 05/2023 |
| Title | Playful Minds: Humorous Peer Play and Social Understanding in Childhood |
| Description | This is a mixed methods study of children's humour production in a volunteer community sample of children aged 5-7 years. We recruited 130 children residing in the UK (M = 6.16 years old, range 5-7; 51.5% female, 47.7% male, 0.8% non-binary; 75.2% of mothers and 68.2% of fathers identified as Welsh, English, Scottish, or Irish). The data focuses on 121 children who completed a free play task with a peer in school time. Children completed a battery of assessments online via Zoom, which included: - Social understanding tasks (Silent Films, Devine & Hughes, 2013; Triangles theory of mind task, Abell et al., 2000; and Retrodictive mind reading, Kang et al., 2017) - Receptive vocabulary (British Picture Vocabulary Scale; Dunn et al., 1982) Children were visited in schools approximately 2 months later (M = 1.96, SD = 1.13) months for a free play observation with a peer. These sessions were transcribed and coded using an observational coding scheme to capture humour production (Paine et al., 2019). During the school visit, children also completed a battery of executive functioning tasks on the NIH Toolbox (NIH, 2014). |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | Associated research paper is under review for publication and is therefore under embargo until the data are published. The data are deposited and currently under review by ReShare. |
| Description | Humorous Play in Schools in Quebec and Wales |
| Organisation | Concordia University |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | We acquired funding from the Welsh Government to expand our partnership with Concordia University to more members of their Department of Education (Dr. Nathalie Rothschild) and their teacher training programme. We shared our 'Giggle Games' materials to support humorous play in the classroom with the team for the purpose of translation to French and further development for use in primary schools in Quebec. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Concordia University team translated the Giggle Games humorous play resources for primary school children to French and rolled the resources out for their teacher training programme students to use during their placements in schools. The teacher trainees completed a workshop with the resources and used the resources as a basis for developing humorous play games for use in their teaching practice. |
| Impact | - Development of humorous play resources in French; Giggle Games/Jeux rigolos - Integration of humorous play resources in primary school classrooms - Integration of humorous play evidence into curriculum for teacher trainees in Quebec |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | Humour in Adolescents' Conversations with Mothers and Friends about their Angry Experiences |
| Organisation | Concordia University |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | - Our research team developed coding schemes for examining adolescents' humour production in conversations with mothers and friends about experiences that made them angry - Our research team (studying their MSc Child Psychological Disorders) conducted all observational coding, data entry, clean up, analysis and write up - I led supervision of the project - Continuing to work together with collaborators to prepare work for publication |
| Collaborator Contribution | - Our collaborators, Monisha Pasupathi (University of Utah), Cecilia Wainryb (University of Utah), and Holly Recchia (Concordia University) were responsible for design and data collection for this study. - All collaborators contribute to progress of project and are working with our team to prepare work for publication. |
| Impact | Two MSc dissertations: "Humour in Young Adolescents' Narrations to Mothers and Friends About Angry Experiences" by Lola Rogers "Associations between Humour Production and Emotional Problems in Adolescents" by Zahshane Shehryar |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Humour in Adolescents' Conversations with Mothers and Friends about their Angry Experiences |
| Organisation | University of Utah |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | - Our research team developed coding schemes for examining adolescents' humour production in conversations with mothers and friends about experiences that made them angry - Our research team (studying their MSc Child Psychological Disorders) conducted all observational coding, data entry, clean up, analysis and write up - I led supervision of the project - Continuing to work together with collaborators to prepare work for publication |
| Collaborator Contribution | - Our collaborators, Monisha Pasupathi (University of Utah), Cecilia Wainryb (University of Utah), and Holly Recchia (Concordia University) were responsible for design and data collection for this study. - All collaborators contribute to progress of project and are working with our team to prepare work for publication. |
| Impact | Two MSc dissertations: "Humour in Young Adolescents' Narrations to Mothers and Friends About Angry Experiences" by Lola Rogers "Associations between Humour Production and Emotional Problems in Adolescents" by Zahshane Shehryar |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Humour in Children's Close Relationships |
| Organisation | Concordia University |
| Country | Canada |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Conceptualising the research project, developing coding schemes for humour production, supervising the activities of the project, analysis and write up. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Study design and data collection, data coding, reviewing study write up. |
| Impact | This collaboration began before the start of this award, however, this award has directly enabled the activities of this collaboration to continue. Paine, A. L.et al. 2021. "Goosebump man. That's funny!" Humor with siblings and friends from early to middle childhood. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (10.1016/j.appdev.2021.101321) |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Humour in Children's Close Relationships |
| Organisation | State University of New York at Geneseo |
| Country | United States |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Conceptualising the research project, developing coding schemes for humour production, supervising the activities of the project, analysis and write up. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Study design and data collection, data coding, reviewing study write up. |
| Impact | This collaboration began before the start of this award, however, this award has directly enabled the activities of this collaboration to continue. Paine, A. L.et al. 2021. "Goosebump man. That's funny!" Humor with siblings and friends from early to middle childhood. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (10.1016/j.appdev.2021.101321) |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Watch and Play Study |
| Organisation | University of Cambridge |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | With collaborators at the University of Cambridge (Claire Hughes), we are investigating the impact of an educational video designed to support parenting knowledge on parent-child interactions. For this collaboration, our team has recruited families who took part in the Child HUMour Study (CHUMS). |
| Collaborator Contribution | Collaborators at the University of Cambridge have collected new data to assess the educational video in a simple experimental design in which families watch the video before or after completing a parent-child interaction task. Our collaborators are conducting observational coding of this data. |
| Impact | Too early to report outputs. |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | 'Giggle Games' school workshops |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We visited 3 primary schools (approximately 200 children) to deliver 'Giggle Games' workshops (Reception to Year 2; 4 to 7 years). We encouraged children to think about what makes them laugh and why it is so important to share humour in their relationships with activities. We then piloted our newly developed 'Giggle Games' resources based on our research on humour. These are new, freely available, and fully bilingual educational play resources for teachers and children to use in the classroom to share humour and laughter. We recorded children's feedback about the games, and their emotional states before and after the games. 72% felt happy before humorous play and this rose to 93% after play. We also asked children to draw 'What makes them laugh' to encourage them to communicate what they think developmental scientists like ourselves should be studying. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/community/our-local-community-projects/case-studies/laughing-all-the-way-t... |
| Description | A Very Funny Summer! Cardiff Council Food and Fun School Enrichment Programme |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Our team visited seven schools in Cardiff who were hosting Cardiff Council's Food and Fun School Holiday Enrichment Programme. Food and Fun is a school-based education programme that provides food and nutrition education, physical activity, enrichment sessions and healthy meals to children during the school summer holidays. We developed 'A Very Funny Summer!' holiday activity for 4 to 7 year olds. This workshop involved activities to support understanding about the importance of play, humour, and laughter in childhood, and to engage children in activities to support humour and laughter with their peers. The session was run by the Research Assistant on the project and a team of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Children played the 'Giggle Games' - new, free, bilingual (English-Welsh) educational resources that we developed from our evidence base of the importance of humour in childhood. Each school was gifted the resources after day of sessions. Images of the Food and Fun events can be found on the #GiggleGames on Twitter (see link below). One teacher emailed to say '"Just a quick message to say thanks so much for the session at Pen y Bryn yesterday. The children loved it! You were fab!' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gigglegames&src=typed_query&f=live |
| Description | Be a Scientist 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Over 500 children and their families attended the 2024 Be a Scientist event to celebrate Cardiff Science Festival. We ran a 'Giggle Games' booth at the event, and engaged children in humorous play activities, and gave them opportunities to try out different methods that we use in our developmental centre, such as head mounted cameras, eye tracking, robot programming, sensory boxes and play experiences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/community/events/view/2787494-be-a-scientist! |
| Description | Giggle Games article in Play for Wales Magazine |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Linked to an Innovation for All Cardiff University Civic Mission award that stemmed from this research, we developed the Giggle Games humorous play resources for classrooms. These were featured in the Play for Wales magazine in their Winter 2022 issue, which led to further requests for the resources from stakeholders in different settings and interest in sharing information about our evidence base at the Bridgend County Council School Improvement Day (upcoming in 2024). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://play.wales/play-for-wales-issue-60/ |
| Description | Giggle Games primary school workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | We held a 'Giggle Games' workshop for one of the primary schools who supported the Child HUMour Study and where the teachers contributed to co-developing the Giggle Games resources. This workshop was co-ran by the team at Cardiff University (the PI) and international collaborators from Concordia University during one of their study visits. We held the workshop for Year 1 and Year 2 children at the school. It included a humorous story reading, a discussion about why laughing is so important, playing the Giggle Games resources and completing 'What makes me laugh' worksheets. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Japan Society for Developmental Psychology Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | 44 education professionals and academics attended this pre-conference workshop, "Let's talk about our practice of developmental support: The cultural comparison of humour in Britain and Japan." In this workshop Dr. Amy Paine (PI) presented findings from this project and Dr. Charlotte Robinson (Postdoctoral RA) presented more findings and information about the project from a education practitioner perspective. This was followed by talks from Mr Kazushige Sunagawa, a TV writer, who spoke about improvisational comedy in Japan, and Dr Kazushige Akagi (Kobe University), who spoke about the merits of comedy for children with ASD. This was followed by a discussion between practitioners and academics about the importance of humour in educational settings, the challenges in studying humour, and cross-cultural differences in humour in the UK and Japan. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Play Wales: Humorous Play Website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | Working with Play Wales, with education professionals, and primary school aged children, we developed new, freely available and fully bilingual educational resources, called the 'Giggle Games'. The aim of these resources is to promote children's humour in play and are based on our research evidence. These have been disseminated to primary schools and other organisations (i.e., children's wards, family centres, teacher training programmes) and have been embedded in a series of workshops (see other engagement activities). The resources are advertised on the Play Wales website which is accessed by education professionals, playworkers, parents, and community groups; in 2019-2020 they had 141,000 website hits and reached 5 million people on social media. This has led to more requests for Giggle Games resources from different organisations and internationally. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://play.wales/working-with-children/schools/ |
| Description | Playful Childhoods Blog: Humour in Play |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Principal Investigator wrote a blog for the Play Wales 'Playful Childhoods' website for parents and caregivers. The Play Wales website which is accessed by education professionals, playworkers, parents, and community groups; in 2019-2020 they had 141,000 website hits and reached 5 million people on social media. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://playfulchildhoods.wales/uncategorized/humour-in-play/ |
| Description | Primary school teacher workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | 6 primary school teachers attended the Cardiff University Centre for Human Developmental Science for a humour and play focus group and workshop. In the focus group we wanted to understand current implementation and value of play and humour in the classroom and how playful experiences in school might have changed during the pandemic. At the end of the focus group, the workshop session involved working with the teachers to co-develop new educational resources that draw on our research on childhood humour. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/community/our-local-community-projects/case-studies/laughing-all-the-way-t... |
| Description | Primary school visit (Cardiff) for STEM week |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | For STEM week at a local primary school in Cardiff, our team visited Foundation Phase pupils (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children, in total approx 170 children). We prepared a range of activities to demonstrate the importance of humour and play, including Giggle Games resources created from findings from the study, humorous story-telling, miniature experiments about humour and their own wellbeing, and discussions about what researchers do at University. Feedback was positive from teaching staff, e.g., "Great activities which really engaged the children and got them talking in an environment in which they felt free to be a bit silly." From feedback sticker boards for which we had 199 responses from children playing different games across year groups, 92.5% of children reported the Giggle Games made them feel positive/neutral. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |