Abstract
Social cognition helps children develop an understanding of their own and others’ mental states, which facilities social interaction. Humor is a multidimensional skill that includes cognitive, social, and emotional aspects that may be shared mechanisms with social cognition. Although we know that both skills are positively related to each other, there has been no study investigating their causal relationship. The present study aimed to find out whether there is a causal relationship between social cognition and humor in 3-year-olds. Children in the experimental group were trained on emotion and false belief understanding, and children in the control group were trained on Piagetian conservation tasks for approximately 1 month. All children completed three different versions of social cognition tasks and one humor appreciation and production test at both baseline and posttest. There was no significant training effect on either social cognition or humor skills in preschoolers. Several possible explanations for the pattern of findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.
