Playful Minds: Humorous Peer Play and Social Understanding in Childhood, 2021-2023

Humour plays a crucial role in children’s early interactions, likely promoting the growth of social understanding and facilitating the development of social relationships. To date, the connection between humour production in peer play and the development of social understanding skills in middle childhood has received limited attention. In a diverse community sample of 130 children residing in the UK (M = 6.16 years old, range 5-7; 51.5% female, 47.7% male, 0.8% non-binary; 75.2% of mothers and 68.2% of fathers identified as Welsh, English, Scottish, or Irish), we conducted detailed observational coding of children’s humour production during peer play and examined associations with children’s performance on a battery of social understanding assessments. Multilevel models showed that 42.8% of the variance in children’s humour production was explained by play partner effects. When controlling for the effect of play partner and other individual child characteristics (age, gender, receptive vocabulary) children’s spontaneous attributions of mental states to animated shapes was associated with humour production. Results are discussed considering how these playful exchanges reflect and influence the development of socio-cognitive competencies.