The Importance of Humor in Education, Entrepreneurship, & Life by Penina Rybak

Text ©2014, Socially Speaking LLC, All Rights Reserved
Socially Speaking LLC Presents
The Importance of Humor:
Social Media Train Tracks for the New Millennium

The Importance of Humor In
Education, Entrepreneurship, and In Life
By Penina Rybak MA/CCC-SLP, TSHH
Speech-Language Pathologist, Educational Technology Consultant
Founder/CEO Socially Speaking LLC
Author: The NICE Reboot-How to Become a Better Female Entrepreneur
Creator: The Socially Speaking™ iPad App
Websites: sociallyspeakingLLC.com & niceinitiative.com
Twitter: @PopGoesPenina

Taken from Penina’s ©2010 Socially Speaking™
Social Skills Curriculum/Seminars and ©2014
book,“The NICE Reboot-How to Become a Better
Female Entrepreneur”, Maven House Press

What is humor?
Humor is having
fun and laughter is the soundtrack of humans
having fun
(Cohen, 2001)

Why is humor important?
•Makes life more enjoyable & interesting
•Makes people more resilient & able to handle work/life stress
•Fosters social communication competence & emotional
connections/resonance
•Fosters intellectual and emotional well being: episodic memory,
Theory of Mind (TOM) and creativity
• Facilitates our ability to be receptive to constructive criticism

What are the developmental components of humor?
Physical Humor:
• Whatever makes you look twice!
• funny faces
• flat affect
• vocal affect
• deadpan voice
• incongruity
• juxtaposing objects in weird positions
• pictorial humor

What are the developmental components of humor?
Linguistic Humor:
• Whatever makes you think twice!
• knock knock jokes
• puns
• slang
• feigned ignorance
• novelty
• make believe
• shared moments of irony

Implications for Education
★Problem solving is the cornerstone of good social
skills.
★Beginning problem-solving requires the
understanding of how "the world works" i.e. the
causality behind events that don't go as planned.
★A child's self-concept, (which encompasses a
sense of humor and the ability to transition
between desirable/undesirable activities) needs to
be somewhat developed so child can display
problem solving skills.

★ Physical humor emerges together with
gross motor development in the 1st year
of life.
★ It’s seen in the child's ability to
attend/track, imitate, and take pleasure in
the movements of those around him.
★ The emergence of physical humor is
contingent on the child's development of
body awareness and emotional
attunement, which is facilitated through
early play.

★ Physical humor helps the child make sense of
the environment and his/her place in it, leading
to increased orientation to person/place/time
and overall resiliency (i.e. ability to adapt and
transition between activities).
★ Children with poor vision and/or eye contact,
sensory processing issues, and Autism, tend to
have difficulty developing a physical sense of
humor on their own without intervention.

★Linguistic humor emerges in children when an intact
temporal lobe can process language and incoming auditory
stimuli, process the meanings behind the vocabulary, and
reference it using past events stored in episodic memory
(where sensory impressions and portions of the receptive
lexicon are stored).
★Children with cognitive and/or language impairment, social
skills challenges, Autism, hearing loss, Executive
Functioning issues, or difficulty processing language other
than their native tongue, all tend to be slower at
understanding and using linguistic humor.

Implications for Entrepreneurship
Humor helps entrepreneurs
get creative when hiring,
presenting, and repurposing
content for The Hook and
elevator pitch when wooing
clients.

Humor, especially within
storytelling, is one of the train tracks
that learning, empathy, and
communication travels on, enriching
the human experience and
showcasing it in business!

Examples of Storytelling With
Embedded Humor

Humor helps entrepreneurs stay resilient and optimistic;
2 crucial traits for success!

Visual Content Marketing is the driving force
behind new trends in social media. But at
the end of the day, it's finding the absurd in
the human condition, and "sharing a
moment" by collectively laughing about it,
that counts. It spurs collective change,
promotes branding, and gives the
competitive, solitary, sometimes grueling
nature of entrepreneurship in the iEra
its wings to be free, and be
more in touch with humanity.

Try the Socially Speaking™ Experience!
Join the NICE Initiative for
Female Entrepreneurship!
By Penina Rybak MA/CCC-SLP, TSHH
Speech-Language Pathologist, Educational Technology Consultant
Founder/CEO Socially Speaking LLC
Author: The NICE Reboot-How to Become a Better Female Entrepreneur
Creator: The Socially Speaking™ iPad App
Websites: sociallyspeakingLLC.com & niceinitiative.com
Twitter: @PopGoesPenina

The Importance of Humor in Education, Entrepreneurship, & Life by Penina Rybak

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