Wondered why your grandparents stared when the rest of you laughed at a joke? Didn’t they find the joke funny enough? Well, not their fault really. Research shows that the ability to comprehend a joke reduces as we age.
A study was conducted by researchers at Washington University on over forty healthy adults who were aged over 65 and forty undergraduate students. They were given exercises to complete jokes, write punch lines and to choose funny endings to cartoons. It was found that younger adults did six percent better on verbal jokes and fourteen percent better on the comic portions than the older adults.
There are basic cognitive mechanisms to understanding what’s going on in a joke. Older adults, because they may have deficits in some of those cognitive areas, may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about.
says psychology professor Brian Carpenter who was involved in the study.
I slightly disagree with what the researchers say as I believe a good sense of humor is in- born and each individual has his own sense of humor. It is unlikely to be affected by aging factor. Moreover, studying a group of 40 adults is like studying a drop of water in the ocean. In fact, it’s easy to find an equal number of stiff-lipped young adults at any given point of time!
It would indeed be a laughing matter if the study is taken seriously!
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