Volume 18, Issue 3

The effects of aerobic exercise, humor, and music on the state anxiety and affect of healthy women were investigated by using a ‘within participants’ design. Twenty women were tested four times at weekly intervals. They were exposed to four 20-minute treatments in a counterbalanced order: 1) stationary cycling at 50% of their maximal heart rate reserve, 2) watching a humorous video, 3) listening to new-age music, and 4) sitting quietly. Participants’ state anxiety and affect were measured 5-minutes before and 5-minutes after each treatment. Statistically significant decreases in state anxiety were observed in all four conditions. Negative affect also decreased in all but the sitting quietly (control) condition. The calculated effects sizes, reflecting the meaningfulness of the intervention-induced changes, were highest in response to humor session, followed by music and exercise. It is concluded, therefore, that the immediate psychological benefits of humor and music are comparable to the psychological benefits of a bout of aerobic exercise.

Cartoons, like other forms of mass media, are aimed not just at anybody, but at a multitude of individuals. The extent to which these numerous individuals understand the cartoons in the same way depends not only on their shared interpretations of the word and image texts themselves, but also on interpretation strategies suggested by the (near)identical circumstances under which the cartoons are accessed. As Gail Dines points out, ‘‘locating cartoons within the cultural realm of mass communication requires an understanding of how these media forms come into existence and how they are consumed by the intended audience’’ (1995: 238). To understand better how cartoons are processed, it is necessary to generalize about contextual factors governing their perception. In this paper I examine cartoons by the Dutchman Peter van Straaten that all appeared on a tear-off calendar in the year 2001. The question addressed is how the temporal and spatial circumstances under which the cartoons are accessed, in combination with the generic conventions of the calendar in which they appear, trigger the activation of specific cognitive schemata, and thus steer and constrain possible interpretations. The general framework in which these matters are discussed is Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) Relevance Theory.

This study addresses a measurement gap on the humor-pain interface in pre-adolescent children. 57 hospitalized children aged 6–12 years who had undergone a medical intervention completed measures of pain intensity and unpleasantness (Colored Analogue Scale), general pain coping style (Pain Coping Questionnaire), humor coping—creation, general, and painspecific (child version of the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale, and a new measure, the Sydney Children’s Hospital Humor Coping Scale for Children). The results supported predictions that (a) use of pain-specific humor-coping would be positively associated with an adaptive problemfocused coping style, and (b) an emotion-focused pain coping style would be inversely related to use of humor coping. Results also supported the hypothesis that humor coping would be more strongly (and inversely) related to ratings of pain unpleasantness rather than sensory intensity. The data provide preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the Sydney Children’s Hospital Humor Coping Scale for Children.

Enrique Jardiel Poncela, a twentieth-century Spanish comic writer principally of novels and plays, developed a personal approach to creating humor that involved a novel vision of humor’s literary potential (for his time). Beginning in 1926, he undertook the renovation of humor in creative writing in Spain based on his new objectives. In his peculiar jardielist style in which art for art’s sake is his predominant motive, he pursued a distinctive mode of writing characterized by inverosimilitude, incongruity, wild inventiveness and hyperbole. As one of his comic resources, he made abundant use of doctors, medicines, therapies, diseases, medical terminology and ignorance of medicine by the public in general for his literary purposes. To date, study of this important aspect of his work has been largely neglected. This study proposes to fill that lacuna by examining his use of deformation of language, character and situation and the comic techniques he utilized for purposes of satire and parody in his novels and plays.

Paul Simpson: On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour John Morreall   Wolfgang K. Hünig: British and German Cartoons as Weapons in World War I Christie Davies   Doni Tamblyn: Laugh and Learn: 95 Ways to Use Humor for More Effective Teaching and Training Peter Derks   Doni Tamblyn and Sharyn Weiss: The Big Book of Humorous Training Games Joyce M. Saltman   Peter Narváez (ed.): Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture Elliott Oring   Christopher Beach: Class, Language, and American Film Comedy William B. Covey