Politics Is a Joke!最新文献

英文中文

Laughing Matters 笑的事情

Politics Is a Joke!

Pub Date : 2018-09-03 DOI: 10.4324/9780429493294-6

Gina C Mireault

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.

婴儿的笑声不仅能揭示婴儿是如何思考的，还能揭示出这种快乐表达的真正原因。我儿子第一次笑是在他三个月大的时候。他在葬礼上这样做，不仅是讽刺;这是令人信服的。周围都是悲痛欲绝的送葬者，他那微弱的笑声是如此有力，以至于让他的听众从悲伤变成快乐——几乎是在瞬间。这一观察让我开始对婴儿笑这一简单现象的早期表现和戏剧性力量进行实证研究。作为一名发展心理学家，我在佛蒙特州约翰逊州立学院(Johnson State College)的实验室里研究婴儿的咯咯笑和欢乐已经近十年了。像我这样的心理学家对为什么笑出现得这么早以及它能揭示婴儿的什么(如果有的话)很感兴趣。笑是普遍存在的。这是一种与生俱来的反应，在生命的头四个月就会出现，与文化或母语无关。无论孩子是在加拿大、韩国、秘鲁还是巴基斯坦长大，孩子在14到18周大的时候第一次笑都会让父母高兴。婴儿的笑声很容易辨认，部分原因是它的真实性。就像哭泣一样，它很难伪装，就像打哈欠一样，它是会传染的。它真实的品质让父母很难忽视它。另一方面，科学家们直到最近才意识到它的重要性。当然，笑并不仅仅是一种娱乐的表达。对于成年人来说，它可以发生在许多情绪环境中，包括当人们紧张时，作为对他人笑声的反应，或者更简单地说，在其他人的陪伴下。但是婴儿为什么会笑呢?这与其说是他们觉得什么有趣的问题。没有适合婴儿的通用笑话。(葬礼上的笑声是由某人打喷嚏引起的。)相反，我们必须考虑婴儿如何从他们的环境中提取幽默。揭示了婴儿对物质世界和社会世界的相当多的理解。

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引用次数: 27