Linguistic humor comprehension in children with articulation impairments

This study investigated the ability of children with articulation disorders to comprehend linguistic humor. It was hypothesized that children with articulation disorders would have more difficulty understanding humor based on phonological differences than humor based on lexical differences. A second hypothesis predicted that children with articulation disorders would have more difficulty understanding riddles in which the phoneme they misarticulated, either /s/ or /r/, was the source of ambiguity than riddles in which the source of ambiguity did not involve the phoneme they misarticulated. Results did not confirm the first hypothesis as there were no statistically significant differences between groups with regard to the children's ability to understand phonological vs lexical humor. The second hypothesis was supported. Children had significantly more difficulty understanding riddles in which the source of ambiguity related to the phoneme they misarticulated, either /s/ or /r/ than they did understanding phonological humor involving nonerror phonemes.