The Study On Preschool Children's Structure Of Sense Of Humor And Its Developmental Characteristics And Relationship With Temperament: Based On Teachers' Perceptions

A long-term research has indicated that sense of humor(SOH) is closely related to children's development of cognition, personality, social skills and emotions. And it has been one hot topic of modern developmental psychology. The present research assumed several developmental characteristics of sense of humor and relationships between SOH and other variables in children. In the Preliminary studies we developed a sense of humor questionnaire for preschool children and explored the construct of children's SOH by means of the questionnaire by Exploratory Factor Analysis and confirmatory Factor Analysis. The 28-item Teacher Rating Questionnaire of SOH in Children achieved high levels of reliability and validation. The construct of SOH of children has three elements: humor appreciation, humor production and humor coping. Significant age and gender differences in children's SOH were found in one of the studies by means of the questionnaire. We also examined the relationship between temperament and SOH in children, showing that temperament has obvious influence on sense of humor.