Let’s say you decide to let your 18-month-old daughter play some learning games on your tablet. You have a couple of apps you’ve downloaded and you’re trying to decide which one to give to her: The one that introduces number and letter concepts with music but is pretty serious? Or the one that makes her laugh with the silly animals that keep popping up and running around the screen?
Since you’re not sure that “screen time” is a good thing for young children, you choose the serious one. At least she’ll learn, you think. Actually, the one that makes her laugh is the better decision.
Rana Esseily (2015) conducted research on babies as young as 18 months old. There are many research studies that show that when children laugh, it enhances their attention, motivation, perception, memory, and learning. But this study was the first to try out the idea on children as young as 18 months old. The children in the group who did a task in a way that made them laugh learned the target actions more than those in the control group who were not laughing during the learning period.
Note
The researcher hypothesizes that laughter may help with learning because dopamine released while laughing enhances learning.
Takeaways
- When you’re designing learning apps or products for children, include plenty of opportunities to get the children to laugh.
- Make sure you test your apps with children in the target age range. What makes you laugh may or may not make them laugh.