Artemyeva T.V. Children’s Humor: the Content of the Construct and the Method of its Assessment
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Abstract
Rationale for the conducted study. The comic as a cultural phenomenon is the subject of interdisciplinary research. The formation of the humor in early ontogenesis – in preschool age is of interest for developmental psychology. The history of the researching of the humor is multifaceted and includes a number of thematic areas: the humor as a phenomenon that destroys the usual meaning of words, the ordering of signs and the creation of a special system of concepts and meanings (Likhachev D.S., Bakhtin M.M., Lotman Yu.M.); the unity of the cognitive and emotional components in the humor (Luk A.N.); types of humor (Rubinstein S.L.). These classic ideas are intensively developed in the research of modern scientists who develop programs for the formation of a sense of the humor in order to optimize the emotional and moral development of children, improve emotional well-being by increasing self-efficacy, positive thinking, and optimism (Popova O.M., Crawford S.). In this regard, it is important to develop diagnostic tools to identify the features of the humor in preschoolers.
Methods. The study involved 457 children aged 5–7 years attending preschool educational institutions. The following methods and techniques were used: content analysis of the study of preschool children’s ideas about the comic; empirical examination of children using the developed tools “Funny stories”, “Colored progressive matrices” by J.Raven, “Dialectical stories” by I.B.Shiyan, “Emotional faces” by N.Ya.Semago; assessment of the retest reliability of the developed methodology; Spearman’s correlation analysis; factor analysis.
Results. The author’s methodology “Funny stories” has been developed in accordance with the ideas of domestic and foreign scientists about the need to study the relationship between the cognitive and emotional aspects of humor. The retest reliability of the method, calculated using the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient (r = 0.789; p≤0.001), indicates a fairly high retest reliability of the developed tools. A correlation relationship (Spearman’s correlation) has been established between the indicators of the “Funny stories” methodology and the “Emotional faces” method (by Semago) and “Dialectical stories” method (by Shiyan). The factor analysis allowed us to distinguish three factors: “The cognitive component of humor”, “The emotional -positive component of humor”, “ The emotional-negative component of humor”.
Conclusions. The main directions of the study of the humor, techniques of humor (parody, paradox, double interpretation, repetition as a technique of wit, wit of absurdity, comparison on a distant or random basis, bringing to the absurd, hint, pseudo-contrast or false contrast, reverse comparison, mixing of styles, false increasing) are highlighted. Empirical research allowed to identify the ideas of preschool children about the humor, to conduct a content analysis of funny stories of children, to develop diagnostic tools for assessing humor in children. A psychometric test of the elaborated instrument “Funny stories” has been carried out. The results allows to determine the specifics of humor in preschool children, the preference for the cognitive or emotional aspects of humor.
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