| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 學習科學研究所 === 103 === Humor is a high level cognitive ability. In jokes, it is the humor skill and not the content which generates amusement. The present study aimed to compare the cognitive and affective processes associated with the distinct humor skills brought into play by ambiguous jokes and inferential jokes, using an eye-tracking study. Sixty-eight participants took part in two experiments with within-subjects designs. Experiment 1 investigated different categories of ambiguous jokes, using stimulus category (phonological, semantic, and syntactic) and ‘funny-or-not’ (jokes and non-jokes) as independent variables and both objective eye-movement indices (first past gaze duration, total viewing time, average fixation counts, regression counts, and average pupil size) and subjective indices (comprehensibility and funniness) as dependent variables. Results supported the hypothesis that first past gaze durations for setup lines would not differ significantly between jokes and non-jokes. Additionally, total viewing time and regression counts were less while reading phonologically ambiguous jokes than for syntactic ones. Experiment 2 compared the effects of semantically inferential and semantically ambiguous jokes. The experimental design was the same as in experiment 1 except that the stimulus category were bridging inferential jokes, elaborative inferential jokes and semantically ambiguous jokes. Results showed that total viewing time was longer, regression counts were more, and average pupil size was bigger for inferential jokes (bridging inferential jokes and elaborative inferential jokes) than for ambiguous jokes. It was concluded that the cognitive processing of inferential joke takes more time and is more complicated than that of semantically ambiguous jokes, and it consequently results in deeper involvement and amusement. Berlyne (1972) proposed an inverted-U shaped theory in which the greatest pleasure is associated with a moderate amount of arousal (not to high and not too low), whereas the present study revealed that the greatest pleasure accompanies this optimal level but that joke skills also play an important role. Future research might use fMRI techniques to further investigate the neural correlates of cognition, affective, and laughter processing between inferential and ambiguous jokes, as well as to design the training courses of joke skills.
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