Humour is a powerful tool for social interaction and learning, however, how young children visually engage with humorous stimuli remains poorly understood. Developmental theories suggest that humour appreciation emerges in early childhood and may be reflected in distinct attention patterns. This study used eye-tracking to examine whether humour captures children's visual attention beyond mere novelty effects.
We tested whether 3- to 6-year-olds fixate longer on humorous images compared to perceptually matched non-humorous controls. Participants viewed five paired stimulus sets, each depicting a standard action, a colour-variant control, and a humorous incongruity that violated functional expectations. Children saw the standard image followed by either the humorous or control version in randomised order. Eye-tracking recorded dwell time to target objects, and the children also provided explicit humour judgements.
Children fixated significantly longer on humorous images (M = 1.53 s, SD = 0.76) than colour-variant controls (M = 1.26 s, SD = 0.76), t(128) = 6.07, p < .001, Cohen's dz = 0.53. Linear mixed-effects modelling confirmed this effect after controlling for individual and stimulus variability (β = -0.29, 95% CI [-0.37, -0.21], p < .001). However, effects varied by stimulus: clear differences were not observed for two of the five sets. Children's explicit judgements validated the humour manipulation, with 82% of choices favouring humorous images. Sets showing the strongest gaze differences were also rated as the funniest, demonstrating convergence between implicit attention and explicit judgement.
These findings demonstrate that humour captures early visual attention through incongruity processing. Stimulus-specific effects suggest that successful humour detection depends on children's conceptual knowledge and expectation violations. This work advances understanding of how incongruity, novelty, and meaning interact to guide children's perception and learning.