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Babies can't possibly get a joke, so what causes their giggles? The answer might reveal a lot about the making of our minds, says Tom Stafford.

嬰兒肯定是聽不懂笑話的，那是什么讓他們咯咯咯地笑呢？Tom Stafford說(shuō)到，其中的原因說(shuō)明了我們思想的構(gòu)成方式。

What makes babies laugh? It sounds like one of the most fun questions a researcher could investigate, but there's a serious scientific reason why Caspar Addyman wants to find out.

嬰兒為何發(fā)笑？這問(wèn)題看似是個(gè)搞笑的研究課題，但是背后卻涉及了一個(gè)嚴(yán)肅的科學(xué)命題，而Caspar Addyman決心一探究竟。

He’s not the first to ask this question. Darwin studied laughter in his infant son, and Freud formed a theory that our tendency to laugh originates in a sense of superiority. So we take pleasure at seeing another's suffering - slapstick style pratfalls and accidents being good examples - because it isn’t us.

而他并不是第一個(gè)問(wèn)這個(gè)問(wèn)題的人。之前達(dá)爾文就在他兒子?jì)雰旱臅r(shí)候研究過(guò)這命題，而弗洛伊德認(rèn)為我們笑是源于優(yōu)越感。我們笑話別人的遭遇 – 滑稽地摔跤和意外遭遇正好說(shuō)明這點(diǎn) – 因?yàn)槭芸嗟牟皇俏覀儭?/p>

The great psychologist of human development, Jean Piaget, thought that babies’ laughter could be used to see into their minds. If you laugh, you must 'get the joke' to some degree - a good joke is balanced in between being completely unexpected and confusing and being predictable and boring. Studying when babies laugh might therefore be a great way of gaining insight into how they understand the world, he reasoned. But although he proposed this in the 1940s, this idea remains to be properly tested. Despite the fact that some very famous investigators have studied the topic, it has been neglected by modern psychology.

偉大的人類發(fā)展心理學(xué)家Jean Piaget認(rèn)為，嬰兒的笑是他們思維的體現(xiàn)。如果你笑，你肯定某種程度“懂了這個(gè)笑話” – 好的笑話是出人意料加稀里糊涂，加意料之中加窮極無(wú)聊的有機(jī)平衡。所以，Jean以為研究嬰兒的笑，可能是了解他們認(rèn)知世界方式的極好方法。雖然20世紀(jì)40年就有了這個(gè)理論，但是目前仍舊處于驗(yàn)證階段。雖然有些許著名科學(xué)家研究過(guò)，但是此命題人就該被現(xiàn)代心理學(xué)所忽略。

If you want to make a baby laugh, then tickling is the surefire method

如果想逗孩子笑，撓癢癢是百試百靈的

Addyman, of Birkbeck, University of London, is out to change that. He believes we can use laughter to get at exactly how infants understand the world. He's completed the world's largest and most comprehensive survey of what makes babies laugh, presenting his initial results at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Berlin, last year. Via his website he surveyed more than 1000 parents from around the world, asking them questions about when, where and why their babies laugh.

倫敦大學(xué)伯貝克學(xué)院的Addyman決定改變這一現(xiàn)狀。他相信通過(guò)笑，我們可以完全理解嬰兒是如何認(rèn)知世界的。因此，他就嬰兒為何發(fā)笑，進(jìn)行了世上最大范圍最復(fù)雜的調(diào)查。去年柏林的嬰兒研究國(guó)際論壇上，他就初步結(jié)果做了匯報(bào)。通過(guò)自建的網(wǎng)站，他調(diào)查了世界上超過(guò)1000個(gè)父母，詢問(wèn)他們孩子笑的時(shí)間，地點(diǎn)以及笑的原因。

The results are - like the research topic - heart-warming. A baby's first smile comes at about six weeks, their first laugh at about three and a half months (although some took three times as long to laugh, so don't worry if your baby hasn’t cracked its first cackle just yet). Peekaboo is a sure-fire favourite for making babies laugh (for a variety of reasons I've written about here), but tickling is the single most reported reason that babies laugh.

研究結(jié)果 – 一如課題本身一般 – 感人肺腑。嬰兒第一次微笑大約在出生6周之后，笑出聲的話，大概要出生三個(gè)半月（雖然有些要花近一年，但別擔(dān)心，這遲早會(huì)來(lái)的）。躲貓貓是逗笑寶貝的絕佳辦法，而撓癢癢卻是家長(zhǎng)們最常提及的逗笑方法。

Importantly, from the very first chuckle, the survey responses show that babies are laughing with other people, and at what they do. The mere physical sensation of something being ticklish isn’t enough. Nor is it enough to see something disappear or appear suddenly. It’s only funny when an adult makes these things happen for the baby. This shows that way before babies walk, or talk, they - and their laughter - are social. If you tickle a baby they apparently laugh because you are tickling them, not just because they are being tickled.

重要的事情，對(duì)于第一次咯咯咯笑，調(diào)查發(fā)現(xiàn)嬰兒只有和他人在一起才會(huì)這么笑，而那些人的行為是嬰兒笑出聲的原因。僅僅肢體的觸碰并不能逗他們笑出聲，同樣躲貓貓也不行。只有大人對(duì)著嬰兒做某些事情的時(shí)候，他們才會(huì)笑出聲。這表示在嬰兒行走，說(shuō)話之前，他們 – 其他他們的笑 – 已經(jīng)有了社交意義。如果你撓一個(gè)寶寶的癢癢，他們咯咯咯地笑，是因?yàn)槟阍趽纤麄儼W癢，而不是因?yàn)樗麄儽粨狭税W癢。

What's more, babies don't tend to laugh at people falling over. They are far more likely to laugh when they fall over, rather than someone else, or when other people are happy, rather than when they are sad or unpleasantly surprised. From these results, Freud's theory (which, in any case, was developed based on clinical interviews with adults, rather than any rigorous formal study of actual children) - looks dead wrong.

而且，孩子不會(huì)因?yàn)橛腥怂さ苟Α６鄬?duì)于他人摔倒，或者別人不開心或者不愉快，嬰兒更可能因?yàn)樽约核さ?，或者別人開心而笑出聲。根據(jù)這個(gè)結(jié)果，弗洛伊德的理論（玩去哪根據(jù)臨床尋訪成人，而非源自對(duì)嬰兒開展的嚴(yán)謹(jǐn)研究）似乎完全錯(cuò)了。

Although parents report that boy babies laugh slightly more than girl babies, both genders find mummy and daddy equally funny.

雖然父母覺(jué)得男孩比女孩笑的更多，但男孩女孩覺(jué)得爸媽一樣搞笑。

Babies find us funny - even if they're too young to understand why we're funny

嬰兒覺(jué)得我們很搞笑 – 雖然他們還小得不知道什么叫做搞笑

Addyman continues to collect data, and hopes that as the results become clearer he'll be able to use his analysis to show how laughter tracks babies' developing understanding of the world - how surprise gives way to anticipation, for example, as their ability to remember objects comes online.

Addyman仍在收集資料，而他希望隨著結(jié)論的越來(lái)越明確，他有一天能夠通過(guò)自己的分析發(fā)現(xiàn)如何通過(guò)笑來(lái)窺探嬰兒對(duì)世界的理解 – 比如，當(dāng)未來(lái)出人意料漸漸變成意料之中，那他們是如何記憶那些意料之中的物體的。

Despite the scientific potential, baby laughter is, as a research topic, “strangely neglected”, according to Addyman. Part of the reason is the difficulty of making babies laugh reliably in the lab, although he plans to tackle this in the next phase of the project. But partly the topic has been neglected, he says, because it isn't viewed as a subject for 'proper' science to look into. This is a prejudice Addyman hopes to overturn - for him, the study of laughter is certainly no joke.

按照Addyman的說(shuō)法，嬰兒發(fā)笑的科研價(jià)值一直被“莫名其妙的被無(wú)視”。部分原因是因?yàn)閷?shí)驗(yàn)室內(nèi)很難有效地保證嬰兒會(huì)配合地笑，而他準(zhǔn)備在實(shí)驗(yàn)下個(gè)階段解決這個(gè)問(wèn)題。而另一部分被無(wú)視的原因，他說(shuō)到，是因?yàn)楹芏嗳瞬挥X(jué)得這是一個(gè)“正統(tǒng)的”科學(xué)命題。這是Addyman希望推翻的一個(gè)偏見 – 對(duì)他而言，研究笑絕對(duì)不是為了開玩笑。