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Stimulus Characteristics Affect Humor Processing in Individuals with Asperger Syndrome

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Abstract

The present paper aims to investigate whether individuals with Asperger syndrome (AS) show global humor processing deficits or whether humor comprehension and appreciation depends on stimulus characteristics. Non-verbal visual puns, semantic and Theory of Mind cartoons were rated on comprehension, funniness and the punchlines were explained. AS individuals did not differ to the control group in humor appreciation of visual puns. However, they had difficulty understanding and appreciating Theory of Mind cartoons and provided mentalistic explanations less frequently than controls suggesting that humor processing is strongly related to the cognitive requirements that the stimuli pose on the perceiver. Furthermore, AS individuals referred in all conditions more frequently to non-joke relevant details. Therefore, humor processing is also influenced by their detail-oriented processing style.

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Notes

  1. If the incongruent element of a joke is presented in the end of a verbal joke, people have to trace back to the information given in the beginning of the joke in order to reinterpret the already heard/read information in a funny way.

  2. Although Freitag et al. (2007) postulated that individuals with AS score on the AQ-k at least with 17, we included one individual with AS with an AQ-k score of 16 as she had a valid diagnosis.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Patrick Luethold for his help in recruiting participants and the Center for Test Development and Diagnostics (Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg) for providing the Hogrefe Test System. Furthermore, we would like to thank Sven Bölte and Christoph Müller for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript, as well as the two anonymous reviewers who helped to improve the manuscript substantially. Finally, we would like to thank all the participants who took part in the study.

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  1. Michael Hegenloh

    Present address: General and Experimental Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Rue Faucigny 2, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Andrea C. Samson & Michael Hegenloh

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Correspondence to Andrea C. Samson.

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Samson, A.C., Hegenloh, M. Stimulus Characteristics Affect Humor Processing in Individuals with Asperger Syndrome. J Autism Dev Disord 40, 438–447 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-009-0885-2

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