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I was trying to find a Discovery or NOVA episode I saw years ago about laughter. Yeah, I'm not having much luck finding it, but there's still plenty of info out there.
This article actually caught my attention because of the last paragraph:
"But chimpanzee laughter usually happens in a different social context than it does in humans: chimps laugh almost exclusively during physical contact, or when contact is imminent during chasing and wrestling games, whereas most adult human laughter occurs during conversation without touching being involved, according to Robert Provine, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, who is an authority on laughter.
It has me thinking now about the differences between laughing because I found something funny in my mind versus laughing as a sign of social agreement with peers, as when participating in a group of people conversing. Most people don't pay attention to how much they "ape" the behaviors of others in an unconscious sign of social agreement, and laughter is just one of those aping behaviors.
I find that the biggest issue people have with someone on the autistic spectrum is inherent in what autism actually is. It's a-social interaction. It's not "fitting in" with the rest of the social group. The push for "dealing" with children on the spectrum is all about getting them to behave and act in more socially acceptable ways. "Interact with us the way that we want you to interact with us." Many people on the spectrum laugh at "inappropriate" times. Of course, it's not inappropriate to the person laughing, but inappropriate as deemed by the social rules. This comes back to a video that was shared with me, and that I posted a while back, about a lady that had gone through psychological reprogramming. She wasn't sad at a funeral, and didn't "get" the joke at a party. Her behaviors would have been seen as a-social, and she was keenly aware of how left out she felt. Her reprogramming included deleting all those rules that she learned while growing up, while being properly socialized as a human being.
I'm not really going anywhere here with this thought process. I'm too tied up at work to let my mind really wonder at the moment, but there seems to be some more stuff in there I'd like to dig my teeth into.
This article actually caught my attention because of the last paragraph:
"But chimpanzee laughter usually happens in a different social context than it does in humans: chimps laugh almost exclusively during physical contact, or when contact is imminent during chasing and wrestling games, whereas most adult human laughter occurs during conversation without touching being involved, according to Robert Provine, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, who is an authority on laughter.
It has me thinking now about the differences between laughing because I found something funny in my mind versus laughing as a sign of social agreement with peers, as when participating in a group of people conversing. Most people don't pay attention to how much they "ape" the behaviors of others in an unconscious sign of social agreement, and laughter is just one of those aping behaviors.
I find that the biggest issue people have with someone on the autistic spectrum is inherent in what autism actually is. It's a-social interaction. It's not "fitting in" with the rest of the social group. The push for "dealing" with children on the spectrum is all about getting them to behave and act in more socially acceptable ways. "Interact with us the way that we want you to interact with us." Many people on the spectrum laugh at "inappropriate" times. Of course, it's not inappropriate to the person laughing, but inappropriate as deemed by the social rules. This comes back to a video that was shared with me, and that I posted a while back, about a lady that had gone through psychological reprogramming. She wasn't sad at a funeral, and didn't "get" the joke at a party. Her behaviors would have been seen as a-social, and she was keenly aware of how left out she felt. Her reprogramming included deleting all those rules that she learned while growing up, while being properly socialized as a human being.
I'm not really going anywhere here with this thought process. I'm too tied up at work to let my mind really wonder at the moment, but there seems to be some more stuff in there I'd like to dig my teeth into.
