The use of humor by an adolescent with autism spectrum disorder

The aim of this study was to describe the humor use by an 11-year-old adolescent with ASD. Through an iterative coding process to identify a successful, unsuccessful, and neutral rating of instances of humor, we describe how does an adolescent with ASD uses humor and the functions humor serves in his interactions with a friend. We describe the personal and environmental factors that support the successful use of humor. The adolescent used two main types of humor (self-initiated and environmentally-initiated), consisting of two forms (verbal and physical). We describe 12 main behavioral indicators to identify the instances of humor. Humor appeared to sever as a means of engaging his friend and he appeared to be most successful in using humor with his friend when in a familiar environment and engaging in a familiar activity. The implications for future research are discussed

Contingent Effects of Humor Type and Cognitive Style on Consumer Attitudes

In the spirit of examining humor contextually, we consider a basic question in this essay: do different humor types “play by the same rules,” cognitively speaking? We examine the relationship between humor and cognitive processing style, as operationalized through Need for Cognition. We find that humor based on disparagement processes “breaks through” the cognitive differences inherent in incongruity humor. Rather than exhibiting incongruity-based humor’s affective response transferring to attitude for low-NFC subjects, and more centrally-employing high NFC subjects’ higher tendency to dismiss the humor’s effect on overall attitude, disparagement based humor is processed the same by both low- and high-NFC respondents. Overall, our findings suggest that the relationship between cognitive processing (as operationalized through Need for Cognition) and resultant attitudes is a complicated one, strongly contingent on humor type. Were only incongruity-based humor utilized, our findings would have reinforced Zhang’s (Psychol Mark 13:531–545, 1996b) assertion that a person’s Need for Cognition will play a key role in the evaluation of humor, but our results suggest that a more complex conceptualization of the relationship between humor and attitude formation is required when humor is treated as a potentially more complicated, context-dependent construct

Cognitive and Affective Consequences of Two Types of Incongruent Advertising

In this study, Heckler & Childers' (1992) two-dimensional conceptualization of incongruity is employed and related to the different schemas that consumers use in ad processing. Consumers can relate advertising to expectations about ads for the product concerned from the ad schema or to brand-related expectations from the brand schema. If an ad is incongruent with the brand schema, consumer responses to incongruity do not only reflect expectancy of the ad, but also involve determining relevancy to the brand, consistent with the two-dimensional conceptualization of incongruity. However, if an ad is incongruent with the ad schema consumers will only react to the expectancy dimension of incongruity. Therefore, these two types of incongruity have different consequences in terms of consumer evaluation, processing and categorization. We find that incongruity with the ad schema mainly has affective consequences. Ads that are incongruent with the ad schema lead to more arousal and consequently more favorable ad evaluations than ads that are congruent with the ad schema. Incongruity with the brand schema has predominantly cognitive consequences. Ads that are incongruent with the brand schema lead to more extensive processing than ads that are congruent with the brand schema. Brand beliefs and categorization change as a result of incongruent advertising information

Popular humor and the collective acceptance of breakthrough innovations

Breakthrough innovations are strikingly unfamiliar additions to everyday life, and novel technologies encounter significant barriers en route toward successful commercialization and widespread acceptance within a given society. This dissertation examines popular humor as a distinctive form of adaptive discourse that communities engage in as they negotiate the potential domestication of a breakthrough innovation. The link between popular humor and collective-level responses to breakthrough innovations is explored via a theory-building, in-depth historical case analysis of major joke cycles during the introduction of the automobile (1897-1929). Analysis of 2,627 jokes, supplemental cultural ephemera, and contemporaneous media accounts reveals the significance of humor as distinctive form of discourse and demonstrates how popular humor can facilitate evolving acceptance of a previously resisted breakthrough technology. In sum, this study extends our understanding of social, cultural, and emotional processes that influence the trajectories of radical innovations, draws attention to collective-level, identity-based forces embedded in the rhythms of everyday life that influence the acceptance or rejection of breakthrough innovations, and introduces humor as a mechanism for negotiating the meaning of novel technologies in society.Managemen

Why Clowns Taste Funny: The Relationship between Humor and Semantic Ambiguity

What makes us laugh? One crucial component of many jokes is the disambiguation of words with multiple meanings. In this functional MRI study of normal participants, the neural mechanisms that underlie our experience of getting a joke that depends on the resolution of semantically ambiguous words were explored. Jokes that contained ambiguous words were compared with sentences that contained ambiguous words but were not funny, as well as to matched verbal jokes that did not depend on semantic ambiguity. The results confirm that both the left inferior temporal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus are involved in processing the semantic aspects of language comprehension, while a more widespread network that includes both of these regions and the temporoparietal junction bilaterally is involved in processing humorous verbal jokes when compared with matched nonhumorous material. In addition, hearing jokes was associated with increased activity in a network of subcortical regions, including the amygdala, the ventral striatum, and the midbrain, that have been implicated in experiencing positive reward. Moreover, activity in these regions correlated with the subjective ratings of funniness of the presented material. These results allow a more precise account of how the neural and cognitive processes that are involved in ambiguity resolution contribute to the appreciation of jokes that depend on semantic ambiguity

How Satirists Alternate Between Discursive Modes:An Introduction of the Humoristic Metaphors in Satirical News (HMSN) Typology

An important challenge for communication scientists is to characterize and understand hybrid genres. Satirical news is such a hybrid genre and comprises a blend of the genres of comedy, news, and political opinion. This theoretical article aims to contribute to this discussion by further specifying the concept of discursive mode. Discursive modes designate certain communicative orientations toward a particular genre element. We make our argument concrete by introducing a typology of metaphorical humor in satirical news. Our humoristic metaphors in satirical news (HMSN) typology, demonstrates that satirists can realize and switch between 4 different discursive modes through metaphors. These discursive modes comprise different combinations of core rhetorical functions in satirical news (humor, education, and evaluation). We describe each type of metaphor in our typology and present a research agenda identifying key issues that require future research and empirical verification

Analyzing jokes with the Intersecting Circles Model of humorous communication

Speakers of jokes are aware of the human cognitively rooted relevance-seeking inferential procedure (Sperber and Wilson 1995) and predict (i.e. metarepresent) the interlocutor’s steps leading to a valid interpretation of the utterance(s) in the joke. Specifically, speakers can predict (a) the accessibility to certain information which builds up a proper scenario for understanding the joke (make-sense frame), (b) the inferential steps taken to turn the words uttered into contextualized meaningful propositions (utterance interpretation), and (c) the awareness of cultural stereotypes regarding professions, nationalities, connoted places, sex roles, etc. (cultural frame). This inferred information (a-c) is exploited to generate humorous effects. In previous research (Yus forthcoming), the Intersecting Circles Model was proposed. It comprises seven types of jokes depending on whether the joke only relies on one of (a-c) or on combinations of them, which entails analyzing the extent to which (a-c) play or do not play a role in the generation of humorous effects. In this paper, 1000 jokes are analyzed and fitted into a type or combinations of (a-c). Several interesting humor-generating patterns are also isolated inside the seven preliminary joke types covered by the Model