The Study On The Development Of Preschool Children's Sense Of Humor And The Relationship With Theory Of Mind

Sense of humor (SOH) is an important part of emotional intelligence, which is closely related to children's positive cognition, creative personality, good social interaction, and both physical and mental health. Theory of mind (ToM) is one of the most important contents on children's social cognition, there are a number of researches on it. Previous studies have shown correlation between SOH and ToM. The present study has further investigated the preschool children's SOH and its relationship with ToM, which will contribute to our understanding about the core of the development of children's SOH, and provide a theoretical basis for training SOH. Meanwhile, to clarify the relationship between the two may also lead to new methods for training children's SOH.Our subjects were3to5years old preschool children, we adopted the Teacher Rating Questionnaire of SOH in children to rate the development of children's SOH and an adapted version of ToM to explore the ability of children's ToM. Besides, we examined both the relationship between ToM and children's SOH rated by teachers and by peers.The major findings in this study are as follows:(1)3to5year-old children's SOH showed an increasing trend in general, while the peak of developing speed are varied in different dimensions of SOH. In structures of SOH, Humor appreciation develops rapidly during3to4years old, humor coping develops rapidly during4to5years old, and humor production develops slowly during3to5:In Types of SOH, Children's non-verbal humor develops rapidly during the3to4, whereas their verbal humor develops slowly during the3to5. The results showed no significant gender difference on the total scores of SOH and the interaction between age and sex was not significant.(2) In generally,3to5year-old children's ToM develops as age increasing, despite their development on different tasks showed various pace. Neither significant main effect of gender nor interaction between gender and age were found..(3) There is a significant correlation between children's SOH and ToM; Children's ToM, both rated by peers and teachers, can predict SOH.