| Summary: | The interest in the effects of television violence on children has resulted in
thousands of studies over the last 20 years. Previous research on laughter has
generated many laughter theories and several studies show that laughter may
influence mirth expressions and funniness ratings of material. The purpose of
this study was to determine if a television laugh track affected children's
perceptions of television violence. A review of the literature covered the areas of
laughter and television laugh tracks, children's processing of television, and
children's television violence perceptions.
Forty-two children, aged 6 to 8 years old, were divided into two groups.
One group watched a televised violent scene accompanied by a laugh track, and
the other group watched the same scene without a laugh track. The children
then answered questions on a Likert scale about their perceptions of the pain and
violence in the scene. The data was analyzed using the t-statistic. At a .05
significance level, there were no significant differences between the control and
treatment groups, supporting the null hypothesis. These results supported
previous research showing that laugh tracks and laughter in general do not
always increase funniness or other ratings, and that children may not be
identifying closely with the characters. Suggestions for future research were
presented. === Graduation date: 1993
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