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FUNCTION OF LAUGHTER FROM A STUDENT WITH AUTISM

Introduction

Description of General Research Area of Interest

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the United States to have increased from 1 in 150 children aged 8 years in 2002 to 1 in 88 children aged 8 years in 2008, (Baio, 2012). With this increased prevalence will come an increase in the demand for special education services for this population, in addition to the increased presence of these individuals in the general education classroom. The National Center for Education Statistics (2011)estimates that, in the time period from 2007 to 2009, the total number of individuals 6 to 21 years old with ASD being served under the Disabilities Education Act who spend less than 21 percent of their time outside of the general classroom has increased from 34.6 percent to 37.4 percent. As their inclusion in the general education classroom increases, methods for recognizing and appreciating these individuals’ unique behaviors must be addressed.

Little research has been done with regards to the communicative function of laughter in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly episodes of laughter that may not correspond to any apparent humorous stimuli. In the setting of the general classroom, for example, seemingly random outbursts of laughter can be regarded by peers and teaching staff as disruptive. The role of laughter in the lives of “neurotypical” (or normal developing) individuals, however, has been extensively studied, dating back to the naturalist and geologistCharles Darwin. Darwin (1872/1998) concluded that laughter can function both “to signal the occurrence of positive emotions such as happiness and joy” and to express “negative states such as anger, shame, and nervousness, possibly masking rather than displaying those states,” (as cited in Orwen & Bachorowski, 2003, p. 188). Owren and Bachorowski (2003) concluded that individuals also use laughter “to influence perceiver affect and associated behavior,” (p. 195). In other words, laughter serves a social purpose between partners. Hudenko, Stone, and Bachorowski (2009) stated that, “vocal expressions such as laughter…are thought to be pivotal to forming social bonds,” (p. 1392).

Research Question and Research Design

The purpose of the proposed study will be to investigate the following question – could an episode oflaughter froman individual with ASD serve a communicative function other than a reaction to humor? A qualitative research design will be utilized to investigate this question, as findings will be based primarily on observations and interviews executed by the researcher. A qualitative design will allow for a holistic view of an individual’s learning environment and access to the variety of factors that could be causing the particular behavior.The research construct will begin with a case study featuring nonparticipant observation of a seventh grade male with ASD in the context of the general education classroom. The case study will be followed by interview research conducted with an older individual with ASD regarding laughter and reactions to humor in different contexts. The interview responses will be compared and contrasted with the case study results.

Propositions.

Episodes of laughter do serve communicative functions other than a reaction to humor for some individuals with ASD. Other communicative functions could include an anxiety response, a response to overstimulation, and/or an attempt to gain another person’s attention.

Key terms and operational definitions.

A communicative function refers to any specific purpose for expressing a thought, idea, or emotion with others. The mode of expressing such thoughts, ideas, or emotions could be verbal (using words) or nonverbal (without words, such as laughter, crying, or a particular gesture). The communicative function of crying with a brother or sister, for example, could be to express sadness. Sharing a story with a friend might have the communicative function of conveying excitement or worry. An infant’s cries may have the communicative function of expressing hunger or fatigue to a caregiver. The communicative function of the individual’s laughter in this study will be determined by the researcher using a functional behavioral assessment method, which consists of what Watson and Steege (2003) refer to as observing and recording “the antecedent, the target behavior, and the consequence of the target behavior,” (as cited in von der Embse, Brown, & Fortain, 2011, p. 27). In this study, the “target behavior” is the individual’s episode of laughter.

The researcher will use the Dictionary.com (n.d.) definition of laugh as expressing

mirth, pleasure, derision, or nervousness with an audible, vocal expulsion of air from the lungs that can range from a loud burst of sound to a series of quiet chuckles and is usually accompanied by characteristic facial and bodily movements. (“laugh,” def. 1)

An episode of laughteris defined as any act of spontaneous laughter occurring during the observation period which lasts for aduration of three seconds or longer.

Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, has been redefined in the most current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition [DSM-5] (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013). The previous classifications of Asperger’s syndrome (often considered a “higher functioning” form of autism) and Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) have been removed,creating an all-encompassing label of autism spectrum disorder, or ASD (APA, 2013). Diagnostic criteria include “persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by…deficits in social-emotional reciprocity… nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction…and in developing, maintaining and understanding relationships,” (APA, 2013, p. 50).

Statement of Ethical Considerations

During the course of the study, class observation will take place in addition to an interview component. The observation will be carried out while maintaining the safety of those in the classroom – the individual being observed, the students in the class, the teacher, and any support staff. Observation will take place in a location of the classroom that will not prevent the quick and orderly exit of all individuals in case of an emergency. With regard to the individual being observed, informed consent will be requested and obtained from both of the individual’s parents before the observations begin.

During observation, a class of students and the individual being observed will be deceived. The individual being observed will not be informed that the researcher’s purpose in the classroom is to gain insight into the communicative function of the individual’s episodes of laughter. To do so would potentially alter or minimize the target behavior. The individual’s parents will be made aware of this, and will be given the option of discontinuing the observation at any time if they feel that the observations are negatively affecting their child in any way. The teacher and support staff will also be consulted after each observation session so that any concerns regarding the researcher’s presence can be addressed and possible solutions found, with particular attention given to any negative impact on the individual being observed.

The school at which the observations will take place is also the researcher’s previous place of employment, so students in the class may recognize the researcher, including the individual being observed. The researcher worked as a paraprofessional with the individual being observed, in addition to several of his classmates. This may cause students to assume that the researcher is again assuming the role of paraprofessional andavailable to help with class activities. Students could be disappointed and react negatively to the researcher’s new role, creating a potential source of harm. Every effort will be made to observe in a classroom that contains the fewest number of students whom the researcher has worked with in the past. The aforementioned announcement will be utilized to explain the researcher’s new role as observer. The researcher will spend time in the classroom prior to collecting data so that students will become accustomed to the researcher’s presence. During this time, the researcher will redirect students who may try to include the researcher in class activities or ask for assistance.

All of the individualsbeing interviewed will be required to sign an informed consent form. The researcher will fully inform the individual regarding the purpose of the interview and the overall goal of the research study. All interview transcripts and observation notes pertaining to class observations will contain no identifying information, and any digital copies will be password protected.

Justification

As students with ASD spend more time in general education classrooms, strategies for understanding and providing support for these individuals will need to be developed (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). The current study attempts to investigate the specific behavior of laughter from one individual with autism, and what communicative function, if any, this behavior has for the individual.The behavior of laughing at inappropriate times is not exclusive to this individual. According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (n.d.), a symptom of ASD related to deficits in social skills includes “giggling or laughing for no known reason or at the wrong time,” (“Autism (Autism Spectrum Disorders)”, para. 2). Based on the researcher’s previous experience as a paraprofessional with the individual to be observed, this particular behavior was often shut down (i.e., the child was told to be quiet by the teacher or his peers) or ignored all together. While the child’s peers generally accepted the individual into their general classroom environment, the individual’s random episodes of laughter did not serve to advance the individual’s relationship with his fellow students, the support staff, or the teacher. It served as a behavior to be dismissed.

The benefit of studying a behavior that has generally been disregarded as meaningless is rooted in the difficulty that students with ASD experience in forming meaningful relationships with their peers. Cook and Semmel (1999) argue that individuals with ASD, whether presenting with mild or severe impairments, “are more stigmatized and less accepted than typical students,” (as cited in Kasari, Locke, Gulsrud, & Rotherham-Fuller, 2011, p. 534). In a study of 60 children with ASD (ages 6 to 11 years old) who spent 80% or more of their day in general education classrooms, researchers found that, “compared to the matched sample of typical children in the same classroom, children with ASD were more often on the periphery of their social networks, reported poorer quality friendships and had fewer reciprocal friendships,” (Kasari et al., 2011, p. 533). Blake, Lund, Zhou, Kwok, and Benz (2012) utilized survey items from the Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2) and the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS) – both national longitudinal studies conducted by SRI International and commissioned by the Office of Special Education, United States Department of Education – to conclude that, “when compared with students with disabilities overall, the risk of repeated victimization was significantly greater for students with autism at both elementary and middle school levels,” (pp. 216 – 217).

The above studies exemplify the hardship that individuals with autism experience when assimilating into their school environments. By helping to identify the communicative function of the individual’s episodes of laughter in the proposed study, the researcher could potentially aid the teacher in explaining the intent of the behavior and help the individual’s fellow students in understanding and developing an awareness of the behavior. Campbell, Morton, Roulston, and Barger (2011) cite Juvonen (1992), who reported that

The greater the perceived responsibility of a hypothetical peer for atypical behavior, the less sympathy and more anger reported by typical peers.Further, the more anger reported by children, the less likely children were willing to offer social support. (p. 391)

Greater understanding of the behavior may therefore aid in the individual’s ability to build relationships with his peers by preventing the assumption that the student with ASD is personally responsible for his behavior – that his episodes of laughter have an intentional purpose of disrupting or aggravating his classmates. Prior to the placement of an individual with ASD into a general education classroom, Boutot (2007) recommends that a teacher explain any of the individual’s atypical behaviors that may “draw attention”, in an attempt to thoughtfully and carefully plan the individual’s inclusion (p. 159). Although the individual being observed will already have been included in the general education classroom, the results of the proposedstudy may allow the teacher to explain the individual’s behavior in the context of disability awareness curricula.

Annotated Bibliography

Limited research currently exists on the potential communicative function of laughter from individuals with ASD. Much of what does exist on the topic has been incorporated into studies of older individuals with Asperger’s syndrome (a diagnosis included in previous editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and often considered as a “higher functioning” manifestation of ASD) and their preference for certain forms of humor. These studies should not be discarded, however, as they provide evidence that laughter is indeed used by individuals with ASD as a reaction to humor, albeit to different types of humor than typically developing individuals. Other researchers have writtenabout reactions to humor and the laughter of individuals with ASD in the context of a developmental model of language. Knowledge of how laughter and reaction to humor develop alongside language in individuals with ASD (as compared to typically developing peers)can be used by speech-language pathologists and other professionals to create more precise diagnostic criteria, to create benchmarks that measure progress in therapy, andto achieve a deeper understanding of the disorder. Researchers have also studied the acoustic properties of laughter from individuals with ASD in an attempt to link the acoustic details of different variations of laughter to specific functionality. Qualitative and quantitative empirical studieson the aforementioned topics and spanning a time period of nearly twenty five years will be presented in the following annotated bibliography. An additional research article on the topic of functional behavioral assessment will also be presented to document the method’s effectiveness in discovering the cause of particular behavior.

Individuals with ASD and their Reactions to Humor

Samson, A.C., Huber, O. & Ruch, W. (2013) Seven decades after Hans Asperger’s observations:

A comprehensive study of humor in individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Humor,

26(3), 441-460. Retrieved from

According to the researchers, previous investigations into how those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) interpret humor have not used well-validated and widely used humor instruments. The researchers attempted to more fully understand the underlying relationships between humor and social skills, as well as the particular role of humor in the lives of individuals with ASD. The researchers utilized a quantitative survey method of research, using questionnaires.

Forty individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) (ages 17 to 58 years, all with a confirmed diagnosis made by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist) and 113 controls (ages 18 to 64 years), completed the questionnaires. Females and males were equally distributed over the two groups as a whole, but the groups differed in age and education level (80% of the control group had a university degree or were students, compared to 55% of the individuals with ASD). The researchers recruited 44% of the participants from Germany, 53% from Switzerland, and 3% from Austria.

Hypotheses were given in association with the different laughter and humor-related phenomenon that the authors decided to investigate (via available, reliable, and valid humor instruments in the form of tests and questionnaires):

(I)Preference for different joke structures: The authors predicted that those individuals with Asperger’s syndrome (AS) will prefer incongruity-resolution humor (humor that has at least a partial resolution) to nonsense humor, a directional hypothesis.

(II)Temperamental basis of humor: The authors predicted that those individuals with AS will score higher on bad mood and seriousness and lower on cheerfulness. Higher patterns of seriousness indicate a lesser ability to switch between a real-life outlook and an outlook that allows for understanding and reaction to jokes. The authors predicted that those with AS will be less able to change between these two modes, a directional hypothesis.

(III)Human behavior: According to the authors, five bipolar factors characterize different styles of humor, which in turn reflect back on the human behavior of an individual – reflective versus boorish, competent versus inept, earthy vs. repressed, benign versus mean spirited, and warm vs. cold. The authors predicted that those with AS will perceive themselves as having a more inept humor style while engaging in “cold” humor behavior (as opposed to socially warm humor behavior), both directional hypotheses. No hypotheses were formed about on the remaining three factors.

(IV)The use of different humor styles: Another theoretically-driven approach to looking at humor involves distinguishing between maladaptive humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating) and adaptive humor styles (affiliative, self-enhancing). The authors predicted that those with AS would engage less in affiliative humor, a directional hypothesis. No hypotheses were formed with regards to self-enhancing, self-defeating, or aggressive humor.

(V)Humor language: Asking individuals how certain words described their personality has proven successful in personality research for traits, including humor. According to the authors, a list of German words existed for various humor domains, with “cheerfulness” and “seriousness” as main factors. The authors predict that those with AS will describe themselves as more serious and less cheerful, a directional hypothesis.

Based on statistical analysis accounting for age and education level, the researchers concluded that individuals with AS preferred incongruity-resolution humor over nonsense humor. They also concluded that both kinds of humor were less appreciated overall by those individuals with AS than by controls. For the temperamental basis of humor as measured by the State-Trait-Cheerfulness Inventory, individuals with AS described themselves to be more serious, higher in bad mood, and less cheerful. The researchers additionally concluded that individuals with AS possess a more socially cold and benign humor style, have a low affiliative humor style, and use humor less often as a form of fun and entertainment.