Cognitive development and humor of young adolescents: A content analysis of jokes

Humor has been recognized as a complex, multidimensional phenomenon, and has not been the subject of much research in the past. More recently, researchers have investigated various aspects of humor to arrive at social and developmental theories of what humor is and how it is used.; This study investigated the possible relationship between the cognitive levels of development of young adolescents and the humor they tell. A secondary aim was to observe the joke telling behaviors of the participants to determine what patterns might emerge about their humor enjoyment.; A review of selected literature includes an overview of philosophical, psychological, and social theories of humor, as well as contemporary theories of humor development from childhood through young adolescence. Piaget's theoretical stages of human thought development are viewed with brain growth periodization research of Herman Epstein. Developmental characteristics of young adolescents are reviewed in addition to their cognitive development.; The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between the cognitive developmental levels of young adolescents and the level of language abstraction that they use in the humor they tell. The 87 participants in this study were young adolescents in grades five through eight from one school in southeastern South Dakota. They were volunteers, of heterogeneous abilities, white, lower and middle class residents of a small town and the surrounding rural area. The gender ratio was 43 females and 44 males.; The participants' verbal abilities were tested with the Verbal Battery of the Cognitive Abilities Test, and the jokes they told were ranked for the level of abstraction of the language used in the joke. The two ranks were analyzed with Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient to determine a relationship.; Results of the study indicate that a moderate to substantial relationship exists between the verbal abilities of young adolescents and the abstraction of the joke language they use. The joke telling behaviors of the participants reflected embarrassment on the part of some tellers and some listeners when sexual jokes were told.