Development of Children's Ability to Create the Joking Relationship

Boys and girls in grades 1, 2, 4, and 6 were used to study developmental changes in children's ability to (1) discriminate joking from factual or nonjoking answers to riddles based on wordplay and absurdity and (2) create their own joking answers on the basis of experience with joking and nonjoking relationships. While first graders were unable to discriminate the joking from the nonjoking answers to the 2 types of riddles, discrimination progressively improved through grades 2, 4, and 6. The ability to create examples of these 2 types of joking relationship also showed a significant increase with age. The ability to formulate a general verbalizable conception of the necessary prerequisites for a joking relationship was not shown to be a necessary condition for generating joking relationships of one's own.