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Humor in the Toddler Room
October 9, 2015
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues.
-Jane Hirschfield, from her poem, Rebus
-Jane Hirschfield, from her poem, Rebus
We all know that laughter is the best medicine, but a team of French scientists has discovered that using humor also appears to help toddlers learn new tasks, reports a new study in the journal Cognition and Emotion:
"Building on the knowledge that making older children laugh can enhance many aspects of cognition, Rana Esseily and her colleagues designed an experiment to see whether using humor could also have an effect on the ability of infants to learn.... When Esseily and her colleagues studied their data, they found that the children who laughed at the antics of the adults were able to repeat the action themselves more successfully than those who didn't laugh, as well as those who were included in the 'humorless' control group.
"Why laughter seems to be related to the toddlers' ability to learn isn't entirely clear, but Esseily and her team put forward two possible explanations. The first relates to temperament. In this case, it is not humor per se that may have facilitated learning, the authors suggest, but [that] temperamentally 'smiley' babies were more likely to engage with the environment and, therefore, to attempt and succeed at the task."
"The second explanation the authors put forward relates to brain chemistry. It is well known that positive emotions, like laughter or engaging well with an experimenter, can increase dopamine levels in the brain, which in turn has a positive effect on learning. Thus, the effect observed here might be a general effect due to positive emotion and not to humor or laughter per se."
by Alison Gopnik
One of the key experts in the film, "The Beginning of Life"
In the last decade there has been a revolution in our understanding of the minds of infants and young children. We used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Now Alison Gopnik — a leading psychologist and philosopher, as well as a mother — explains the cutting-edge scientific and psychological research that has revealed that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined.
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Comments (3)
Displaying All 3 CommentsResources for Infant Educarers
Ojai, California, United States
Laughter and fun are byproducts of play. Luckily we adults have the privilege of being included in the wonderful sometimes humorous scene of an early childhood setting...but it needs to be led by the child, not the adult, in order for early development from birth to shape the self-aware, self-regulating body brain connection of infants and toddlers. www.rie.org
Resources for Infant Educarers
Ojai, California, United States
What would the infants and toddlers be learning from attending to their inner and outer worlds if we adults didn't interrupt them, thinking we know best how and when they should learn? Intrinsic motivation to play originates from within the self from birth, building the foundation of neuro-sensori-motor intelligence, while forming vital skills, such as gross and fine motor development (the latter has been shown by research at the University of Virginia Curry Education School: Grissmer, D., Grimm, K.J., Aiyer, S. M., Murrah, W. M., & Steele, J.S. (2010). "Fine Motor Skills and Early Comprehension of the World: Two New School Readiness Indicators." Developmental Psychology, 46, 1008-1017), to be most influential for later academic gains. Indeed, the literature over the past ten+ years has provided substantial support for significant contributions of executive function, aka self-control, and motor development to later cognitive development. Paying attention to intrinsic motivation provides ample stimulated learning. "Baby Knows Best" (Little Brown, 2013) relates the view of infants and toddlers as competent humans who need "the opportunity and time to take in and figure out the world around them.” Magda Gerber
"...when adults have the privilege of observing how self-regulated, engaged and competent the children are, the experience reveals the children's natural process of discovery, invention and learning." See How They Play" dvd (www.rie.org) "Every parent who loves their child needs to view this DVD”, Dr. Stuart Brown, Founder and President of the National Institute for Play.
Bottom line on hovered over, helicoptered childhood comes from my mentor, Magda Gerber: “If we help our children build confidence from infancy in their ability to learn, in their own sense of knowing what is best for them, then they will have the capacity to learn for a whole lifetime.”
Pennsylvania, United States
Laughter is a good thing for every age!
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