# 2 - "Two Peanuts Were Walking Down The Strasse...."

(Monty Python/ "The World's Most Dangerous Joke")

Jokes Not As Funny As You Get Older

Don't worry, you won't lose your sense of humour as you get older, but you might find it harder to “get” some jokes, new Canadian research has shown.The research by Dr Prathiba Shammi, a psychologist with Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, and PhD supervisor Dr Donald Stuss, was published last year in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

In research designed to probe humour comprehension and appreciation, Shammi and Stuss found that while older people were just as capable as younger people of “getting” wordplay jokes, they were not as good at recognising funny cartoons, or identifying funny punch lines to jokes. Nevertheless, when the older people did get a joke, they responded appropriately, showing they were still capable of appreciating jokes they understood.

"The good news is that ageing does not affect emotional responses to humour – we'll still enjoy a good laugh when we get the joke," said Shammi. "This is important because [humour] is integral to social interaction and it has long been postulated that humour may enhance quality of life, assist in stress management, and help us cope with the stresses of ageing."

The small study involved 20 healthy older adults with an average age of 73 and 17 younger adults with an average age of 28. In the first of three humour tests, participants were presented with 28 written statements and asked to pick out the humorous ones. One example from the 21 humorous statements was a sign in a tailor shop on Hong Kong: "Please have a fit upstairs".

The second test presented participants with 16 incomplete jokes and asked them to select the funny punch line from a choice of four endings. One joke began: "The neighbour approached Mr Smith at noon on Sunday and inquired, 'Say Smith, are you using your lawnmower this afternoon?' 'Yes I am,’ Smith replied warily." And the funny ending was “Fine you won't be wanting your golf clubs, I'll just borrow them”, while the other endings were either logical or a non sequitur.

In the third test, participants looked at 10 different cartoon drawings, each consisting of a series of four similar drawings, only one of which had a funny detail. The participants were asked to select the correct funny version.

While the researchers caution that this is a preliminary study, the findings suggest the ability to understand more complex forms of humour – such as the punch lines and cartoons involved in the second and third tests - may diminish in the later years.Shammi and Stuss hypothesise this is because humour comprehension uses abstract reasoning, mental flexibility and working memory. These are complex higher mental functions believed to be associated with the frontal lobes of the brain which deteriorate with ageing.

Nevertheless, the fact that the older participants reacted appropriately with a smile or laugh when they did understand the humour, suggests that the humour processing related to other regions in the brain remains intact.

This work was an extension of research published in 1999 that had showed the 'right' frontal lobe plays a pre-eminent role in our ability to appreciate humour. The earlier research looked at people with frontal lobe brain damage, such as stroke victims. In the new research, Shammi and Stuss found that while older people were not as good as young people at understanding complex humour, their ability to appreciate jokes they understood was much better than patients who had the brain damage.