One of the skills that help children develop humor is knowing that people have access to different mental states and that some can have false beliefs or be deceived. When parents pretend not to see a child creeping up to scare them - this is an example of a child understanding deception....

Imagination plays a role in incongruity. It helps children to play social roles that they usually wouldn't. Imagination begins to appear in children around 12-18 months, corresponding with the time children start to repeat parent's jokes.

Most types of humour involve the realisation of contradiction, or a mismatch, between a concept and a situation. In other words, we laugh when things surprise us because they are out of place. Even simple games like peek-a-boo have an element of surprise where someone suddenly ap...

Children first need to possess a few basic cognitive skills to communicate jokes, such as imagination, the ability to take a different perspective, and language.