HUMOR & COMPREHENSION
Riddles, jokes and computers can help children improve their reading skills. Developmental psychologists told the annual meeting of The British Psychological Society Thursday that training youngsters to understand and make up riddles and jokes can improve their reading comprehension. “Different types of linguistic awareness seem to underpin decoding and comprehension skills, and riddle training is potentially useful in remediating poor comprehension,” Dr. Nicola Yuill said. The professor at the University of Sussex and her colleagues conducted two studies to develop programs to help children whose reading progress drops around the age of seven to nine. Forty children were given standardized reading tests for accuracy and comprehension and were also asked to choose appropriate punchlines for ambiguous riddles to improve their linguistic awareness. The children with the highest number of correct riddles had better comprehension scores. In the second study, an equal number of pupils had either riddle, absurdity or story reading training. The students who had practiced with riddle training and…
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