When the Autistic Kid Thinks Hes Funny
As a doctoral student in psychology thinking about my doctoral project, I wondered if part of the social difficulty experienced by individuals with AS could be attributed to problems navigating the complex language of humor. This idea stemmed from my internship at the Children's Evaluation Center in Watertown, where I helped to evaluate many children on the Pervasive Developmental Disorder spectrum. I noticed that their sense of humor was not attuned to that of their peers and wondered if individuals on the uppermost end of the spectrum, those with AS, also perceived humor differently than their peers. The difficulty for a child with an atypical sense of humor is that they are less likely to draw others to them through this medium. This is especially the case during the teen years, when peers are often very unaccepting of differences.
To determine if teenage boys with AS have an atypical sense of humor, I compared the humor production and perception of two groups of adolescents: those diagnosed with AS and those without the diagnosis. To reduce interference from other variables, the members of the two groups were matched for age (within six months), estimated IQ (within one standard deviation), and gender (all male). Each group contained 15 members.
According to Gardner and Brownell, researchers who developed the humor measure that I used in my study, flexible thinking is important in understanding jokes. Punchlines in jokes are funny partly because they are unexpected. Additionally, according to these researchers, big picture thinking is essential in understanding jokes, as it allows the listener to understand how the surprising punchline coheres with the joke body. As individuals with AS often demonstrate rigid thinking, a desire for the preservation of sameness, and difficulties with big picture thinking, it seems that individuals with AS would have trouble perceiving and producing conventional humor.
My research suggests that students with AS produce and perceive humor in ways that are different from their same-age peers. They tended to prefer jokes with straightforward endings more than did students in the control group, and their humor production was often less organized and less formulaic. However, I clearly recognized that the boys with AS both wanted to laugh and to make others laugh. Therefore, rather than calling this finding a humor deficit, humor atypicality is perhaps more appropriate.
The navigation of social interactions is not one skill, but a set of skills that includes reading facial expressions, interpreting nuances, understanding the possible motives and wishes of others, regulating emotions, and facility with language. While individuals with AS typically have average to well above average verbal cognitive abilities they often have difficulty using language in ways that connect them to others.
The literature highlights the importance of humor in developing and maintaining relationships. It has been shown to reduce social uncertainty and anxiety, increase intimacy, and allow for the safe expression of delicate matters (e.g., sexual interest).
Since humor plays such an important role in relationships, the possibility of humor atypicalities would help explain some of the social difficulties seen in the AS population. This information might be of use in aiding diagnosis. More importantly if normative humor (which I'm defining as humor that facilitates relationships) were shown as an area of weakness in individuals with AS, this information would be an important firs step in possible remediation.
Humor, specifically jokes, involves cognitive capacities that are often challenging for individuals with AS. According to Gardner and Brownell, researchers who developed the humor measure that I used in my study, flexible thinking is important in understanding jokes. Punchlines in jokes are funny partly because they are unexpected. Additionally, according to these researchers, big picture thinking is essential in understanding jokes, as it allows the listener to understand how the surprising punchline coheres with the joke body. As individuals with AS often demonstrate rigid thinking, a desire for the preservation of sameness, and difficulties with big picture thinking, it seems that individuals with AS would be at risk for difficulties perceiving and producing conventional humor.
The difficulty of a child having an atypical sense of humor is that they are less likely to draw others to them through this medium. This especially the case during the teen years, when peers are often very unaccepting of difference. Difficulties perceiving humor can create feeling of marginalization in students when they are surrounded by laughing peers who got the joke. Additionally, they may become ideal targets for teasing; for instance, without understanding the sarcasm in a put-down, these students are unable to fight back. The humor production findings in my study give further evidence that students with AS are at a social disadvantage. With decreased ability to make peers laugh, teenagers with AS have less access to a powerful tool for facilitating relationships.
The identification of these issues has implications for possible intervention. The father of one adolescent boy with AS that I met with told me that, from an early age, he had coached his son on elements of humor. This seems to have paid off; the judges gave this participant some of the highest ratings of all the participants in the study. If this student in any indication, humor skills can be explicitly taught with some success. By giving the individuals with AS these skills, they are given a more equal chance with regard to social interaction.
For a more detailed account of my study, and for list of references, the interested is referred to my doctoral project, housed at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology library.
Source: https://www.aane.org/aspergers-syndrome-humor/
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