WHAT CHILDREN LAUGH AT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18446, 6 January 1922, Page 9

WHAT CHILDREN LAUGH AT

People troubled with nerves will perhaps say that children need no encouragement to laughter, but the matter is important enough to be analyse*! and reported for the august British Association. One of the addresses at the recent session of this body, held in Edinburgh, was taken up with a consideration of the sense of humour in school children. Dr C. W. Kimmins, of London, told the Psychology Section what he had found out, beginning with children of five, who evinced an extraordinary interest in Charlie Chaplin. The reason for it, he thinks, is because “there is not only continual movement and change of action, but also that Charlie is breaking all the conventions and doing the very things that children are forbidden to do.” If parents have not been aware of this, the report from so high a source may curtail Charlie’s future audiences. “Punch and Judy,” however, has found no adequate competitor in interest for children. Dr Kimmins, as reported in the London press, has been concerned to discover the nature of the material which at different ages causes amusement in children and provokes laughter. We read: “As to the chief causes of laughter, experts are not in agreement. Bergson maintains that the comic is that side of a person which reveals his likeness to a thing and conveys the impression of pure mechanism. The corrective is laughter. Absent-mindedness he describes as one of the great watersheds of laughter, and says it is the part of laughter to reprove ab-sent-mindedness. Freud, in his ‘Wit and the Unconscious,’ has elaborated the idea of pleasure being derived from the economy of psychic expenditure. Word pleasure and pleasure in nonsense, Freud says, are a relief from critical reasoning. Man is an untiring pleasure-seeker. Under the influence of alcohol a man becomes a child again, and is freed from logical inhibitions. Boris Sidis holds that laughter never comes from economy, but from superabundance of energy. Laughter, says another authority, binds us to the childhood of the race. “There is. no difference of opinion as to the great physiological value of laughter. _ In an analysis of the results he has obtained, Dr Kimmins says that cases of puns perpetrated by children under seven years of age are very rare, while many of the reported stories are due to misunderstanding of the words used. As an illustration, ho quotes the classic instance reported by Sir Joshua Fitch, who asked some small children to write the Lord’s Prayer, and afterwards came across such mistakes as ‘Harold be Thv name’ and ‘Lead us not into Thames Station.’ The records of children of nine years of age show a very great change. Boys and girls at this period are particularly interested in funny stories and jokes; riddles and play upon words maintain their position at that age, but the popularity of the misfortunes of others as a source of merriment is ceasing to exist, and soon disappears entirely. At 10 years of age children are very keen on books of jokes and comic papers. The affairs of the classroom are found to afford suitable material for the gratification of the sense of humour, and the lecturer quotes a case in which the teacher wrote on the blackboard, ‘Don’t throw matches about; remember the lire of London,’ to which was added by a boy,' “Don’t spit; remember the Flooil.’ ” The period between 11 and 12 years of age, we are told, “appears to mark quite clearly the parting of the ways, and a sense of humour seems to disappear entirely.” Something rather alarming takes its place: “The funny story is of a fay more personal nature, the clement of superiority runs riot, and children delight in extravagant stories of stupidity concerned with adults rather than themselves. Stories involving a smart but often rude retort appeal at this age, and to illustrate his point Dr Kimmins mentions the teacher who told a stupid boy that when Lloyd George was his age he was top of his school, to which the boy replied that when Lloyd George was the teacher’s age he was Prime Minister. “In the period from 14 to 15 years of age it is more difficult to generalise. There appears to be, however, very clear evidence that the revival of humour at 13 in the case of girls and 14 in the case of boys is well maintained/' In the selection of funny stories by the children a much larger percentage comes from the works of well-known writers; W. W. Jacobs and lan Hay’s stories are popular, and of individual stories ‘Three Men in a Boat,’ ‘Daddy Longlegs,’ “Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,’ ‘The Young Visitors,’ ‘Tom Sawyer,’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ are much quoted. The cultured home, says the lecturer, has a great influence on the choice and varietv of stories, whereas the very poor child relies on the school and the comic papers for his selections. “Children often laugh at stories which they do not understand because others laugh, and many instances occur of children repeating stories of which clearly they have not grasped the point. For instance, the story is told of a man who was boasting of his mountaineering experiences, and a friend said, T suppose you saw Ben Nevis?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I called on him, but he was not in.’ A child told that as a funny story, but instead of Ben Nevis substituted the mountain of Snowdon, thus missing the whole point.”