{"title":"Laughing Matters","authors":"Gina C Mireault","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-6","url":null,"abstract":"An infant’s laughter can reveal not only how babies think but also the serious reasons for this expression of joy My son was three months old when he uttered his first laugh. That he did so at a funeral was more than ironic; it was compelling. Surrounded by grieving funeral-goers, his tiny laugh was so powerful as to provoke his audience from sadness to joy—together and almost instantaneously. This observation launched my empirical investigations into the early appearance and dramatic power of that simple phenomenon: infant laughter. As a developmental psychologist, I have studied the giggles and glee of babies for nearly a decade now in my laboratory at Johnson State College in Vermont. Psychologists such as myself are intrigued by why laughter appears so early and what, if anything, it can reveal about infants. Laughter is universal. It is a hardwired response that comes online early—in the first four months of life—regardless of culture or native language. Whether a child is raised in Canada or Korea, Peru or Pakistan, her first laugh will delight her parents at about 14 to 18 weeks of age. A baby’s laugh is easily recognizable, partly because of its genuineness. Like crying, it is hard to fake and, like yawning, is contagious. Its authentic quality makes it hard for parents to ignore. Scientists, on the other hand, have only recently caught on to its significance. Of course, laughter is not exclusively an expression of amusement. In adults, it can occur in many emotional contexts, including when people are nervous, as a response to others’ laughter or more simply when in the company of other people. But why do infants laugh? It is not so much a question of what they find funny. There is no universal joke for infants. (The funeral laugh was prompted by someone’s sneeze.) Instead we must consider how infants extract humor from their environment. reveal a considerable amount about infants’ understanding of the physical and social world.","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130982866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123397685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"The Rise of Late Night Comedy","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126358095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"Political Humor: Prospect and Retrospect","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115219690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"Politicians Behaving Badly","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122616416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"Introduction: Politics Is a Funny Business","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121411851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122611985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson
{"title":"What’s So Funny?","authors":"S. Lichter, Jody C. Baumgartner, Jonathan S. Morris, Daniel Amundson","doi":"10.4324/9780429493294-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429493294-5","url":null,"abstract":"What do you do to start reading whats so funny? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. It's not fault. Someone will be bored to open the thick book with small words to read. In more, this is the real condition. So do happen probably with this whats so funny.","PeriodicalId":402871,"journal":{"name":"Politics Is a Joke!","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124830093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}