This paper is published as Nguyen, D., Kemp, N., & Want, S. C. (2011). The effects of funny

and serious task content and expectations of fun versus importance on children’s cognitive

performance. Australian Journal of Psychology, 63, 154-162. doi:10.1111/j.1742-

9536.2011.00014.x

The effects of funny and serious task content and expectations of fun versus importance on

children’s cognitive performance

David Nguyen and Nenagh Kemp

School of Psychology

University of Tasmania

Stephen C. Want

Department of Psychology

Ryerson University

Keywords: Task content, task instructions, humor, fun, cognitive testing.

All correspondence should be directed to Nenagh Kemp, School of Psychology, Locked Bag

30, University of Tasmania, Hobart 7001, Tasmania, Australia. Phone +61 3 6226 7534, fax

+61 3 6226 2883, email nenagh.kemp@utas.edu.au

Author note and acknowledgements: This research was conducted by David Nguyen for his

Honours thesis in Psychology at the University of Tasmania. We would like to thank the

principals and teachers of participating schools, and all the children who took part so

cheerfully.

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Abstract

This study investigated how children’s performance on a cognitive task was influenced by

funny and serious task content, and by fun or important instructions. Eighty-four children in

Grades 1 and 5 performed two versions of a paired-associates word-learning task, which

paired nonsense words with novel definitions and illustrations. All children completed a

version in which the definitions and illustrations were funny, and a version in which they

were not, with either fun or important instructions. Results revealed significantly better

performance on the funny than on the serious version, but only when the funny version was

presented first. There were no significant effects of task instructions. The findings confirm

that making children’s cognitive tasks funnier can enhance task performance. Although there

were no effects of expectations as created by task instructions, the enhancing effect of funny

content was influenced by children’s expectations as created by their prior experience with

the task.

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The effects of funny and serious task content and expectations of fun versus importance on

children’s cognitive performance

The present paper concerns some of the factors, other than ability or competence, that

may influence children’s performance on cognitive tasks. Specifically, the paper reports an

investigation into how children’s perceptions of cognitive tasks on two dimensions, fun and

importance, affect how well they perform. It seems intuitive that children are likely to be

highly motivated, and thus likely to perform well, when engaged in tasks that are perceived

as high in fun (such as when playing a game) as well as in tasks that are perceived as high in

importance (such as completing school assessments). The aim of the present study was to

investigate the impact of perceptions of fun and importance on children’s task performance in

two ways; firstly, by attempting to directly manipulate the content of a task to produce a

funny versus a serious version of the task, and secondly, by emphasising either the fun or

important nature of the task when introducing it to the children. Based on existing literature,

both simple and interactive effects of these manipulations were anticipated, as outlined

below.

The Effect of “Fun” Content on Children’s Cognitive Task Performance

The extent to which children find an activity to be fun has been shown to have a powerful

influence on their motivation and performance, and enjoyable tasks have usually been found

to have a positive effect on learning (Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Joussemet, Koestner, Lekes,

& Houlfort, 2004; Lepper & Cordova, 1992; Lepper & Gilovich, 1982; Malone & Lepper,

1987). For example, children in Grades 3 to 5 have demonstrated increased retention of key

material and more successful problem-solving when presented with tasks that include novel

embellishments (e.g., presenting a point on a graph as a “baby mouse”) or tasks that have

been situated in a fantasy context (e.g., presenting a problem as a detective case that the child

must solve) (Cordova & Lepper, 1992; Parker & Lepper, 1992). More generally, many

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cognitive tasks developed for use with children incorporate elements designed to make the

tasks more enjoyable and game-like, to engage children’s attention and encourage their

participation. For example, classic studies of children’s understanding of conservation of

number (e.g. McGarrigle & Donaldson, 1975) and of false beliefs (e.g. Wimmer & Perner,

1983), make use of toys such as teddy-bears and dolls, which presumably help to create the

feeling that the task is more of a game than a test, and help to motivate the child to

participate.

There are a variety of reasons why children may excel in tasks they find fun. For

example, a child having fun on a task may be experiencing “flow”: the inherent enjoyment in

being totally immersed in activity, marked by focused attention and a lack of self-awareness,

which are conducive to optimal performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988). Children may also

perform better because they are experiencing positive affect, which has been shown to

enhance aspects of cognitive functioning such as creative problem solving (e.g., Estrada,

Isen, & Young, 1994), memory recall of neutral and positive material (Nasby & Yando,

1982), verbal fluency (Greene & Noice, 1988) and strategy use in decision-making tasks

(Isen, Rosenzweig, & Young, 1991). Fun tasks may also simply be more personally

interesting to children. Children who demonstrate individual interest in a particular task or

topic pay closer attention, persist for longer periods of time, learn more, and find more

enjoyment than those who display less individual interest (see Hidi, 2001; Renninger &

Wozniak, 1985).

Although a variety of evidence exists to suggest that making a task more enjoyable can

improve children’s performance, it is difficult to find or generate a satisfactory definition of

what qualifies as “fun”. As described above, children can be encouraged to find a task more

enjoyable through a range of techniques, such as by incorporating the use of toys, presenting

the task in a fantasy context, or including elements which are personally interesting to

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individual children. In the present study we attempted to make the task more fun/enjoyable

by incorporating ideas and pictures that had been rated as funny, and by contrasting these

with ideas and pictures that had been rated as more serious, or not funny. The first aim was

thus to replicate previous findings that children perform more successfully on tasks that

involve content that is perceived as fun (here, by using amusing materials), compared to tasks

that are less fun (here, by using materials that are not amusing). To our knowledge, this study

is the first to attempt to demonstrate a beneficial effect of fun on performance specifically

through the use of humorous task content, as opposed to task content made more enjoyable

through the use of toys, or through being presented in a game-like setting.

The Effect of “Fun” Instructions on Children’s Cognitive Task Performance

Aside from manipulating the actual task content, adults often also attempt to alter

children’s perceptions of how much fun a task will be by simply leading children to expect

that the task will indeed be fun. For instance, in an attempt to motivate a child to participate,

a developmental researcher might introduce a cognitive task as a game, implicitly suggesting

that it will be fun. The subtasks within formal intelligence tests for children, for example, are

commonly framed as fun activities. When children are tested on the block design task in the

McCarthy Scales, they are asked to “play with the blocks” (McCarthy, 1972, p. 55). In the

Stanford Binet Intelligence Scales, the examiner is advised to build rapport with younger

children by calling the tasks “a series of games with some fun tasks” (Roid, 2003, p. 41). In

the Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, children who appear disengaged

are told that there will soon be “games that are lots of fun” in order to arouse their curiosity

(Wechsler, 2004, p. 47).

Similarly, it is not uncommon for developmental psychologists to present other tests of

children’s cognitive abilities as “fun” or as “games” when introducing those tests to child

participants. For instance, the dimensional change card sort task, which requires children to

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sort cards according to shape or colour, is typically described to children as the “colour” or

“shape game” (Frye, Zelazo & Palfai, 1995; Halford, Bunch & McCredden, 2007;

Marcovitch, Boseovski & Knapp, 2007; Oh & Lewis, 2008). Other examples are not hard to

find; a reader browsing recent literature on child development will find that tasks assessing

abilities as diverse as memory (Schwenck, Bjorklund & Schneider, 2007; Shin, Bjorklund &

Beck, 2007), strategic reasoning (Carroll, Apperly & Riggs, 2007), decision-making (Beck,

Robinson & Freeth, 2008), and map use (Shusterman, Lee & Spelke, 2008), have all been

introduced to children as games. In addition, tasks designed to assess children’s

understanding of physical causality are often described as “toys” (Schulz, Gopnik &

Glymour, 2007) that children will “play” with (Fry, Zelazo & Palfai, 1995).

There may be good reasons to attempt to persuade children that a task they are about to

perform will be fun. In addition to increasing motivation, framing a task as a fun game may

help children to avoid adopting performance goals (Dweck & Leggett, 1988), and instead

focus on enjoying the task for its own sake. When a situation emphasises the need for

performance, individuals are likely to adopt performance goals, both immediately, and in the

longer term (Elliot & Dweck, 1988). This can lead to shallow learning and greater

vulnerability to negative affect, such as performance anxiety and effort withdrawal

(Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Elliot & McGregor, 2001).

However, while motivation may (at least initially) be encouraged through such task-

framing, the effect of suggesting that a task will be fun may ultimately depend on whether the

task is actually fun or not. Recent research with adults suggests that describing a cognitive

task as fun may not be the best strategy for optimising performance if the task is actually

perceived as relatively serious or tedious. Bianco, Higgins and Klem (2003) investigated the

impact on adults’ performance of mismatches between instructions that framed a task as fun

or important, and adults’ implicit theories of the task as fun or important. In the first of three

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studies, college students were asked to rank a list of activities according to the degree to

which they considered the activity to be fun and/or important. “Financial Duties” was the

activity rated as most important, while “Dating Games” were rated as most fun. Bianco et al.

(2003) then found that adults performed better at a computer task with a Dating Game theme

when the task instructions framed the task as fun, rather than important. When the same

computer task was presented with a Financial Duties theme, performance was significantly

better when the task instructions framed the task as important, instead of fun. The authors

explained their findings in terms of self-regulatory theory: a regulatory “fit” between an

adult’s implicit theory of a task and the framing of that task leads to increased motivation and

subsequent performance compared to when there is no fit. Bianco et al.’s (2003) findings thus

suggest that when adults implicitly believe a task is fun, they will perform better when they

are instructed that it is fun, rather than important. Conversely, when adults do not think of a

task as fun, they perform better when the instructions emphasise importance instead.

If Bianco et al.’s (2003) findings with adults also apply to children, then framing a

children’s cognitive test as fun would optimise children’s performance when children

actually think of that test as a fun activity. However, when children actually view a cognitive

test as a serious or mundane activity, then performance may suffer if they are initially led to

expect that it will be fun. This possibility could have significant implications for testing in

developmental and educational psychology. Specifically, children’s abilities in test-like tasks

may be underestimated if tasks are framed as games. Conversely, children’s performance on

game-like tasks could similarly be underestimated if these tasks are framed as tests.

Evidence from two studies conducted in the 1970s provides conflicting conclusions about

the effects of task instructions on children’s performance, and the potential interactions

between task instructions and task content. Strang, Bridgeman, and Carrico (1974) found that

children in Grade 3 performed significantly better on three non-verbal subtests of the

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Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC; Picture Completion, Picture Arrangement

and Object Assembly) when told that they would be playing a game, compared to when told

that they would be taking a test. However, as these three subtests all have game-like elements

(e.g., the use of cartoon pictures and puzzle pieces), the “game” instructions may have

conferred the performance benefits of regulatory fit. In contrast, Bridgeman, Strang, and

Buttram (1974) found no performance benefit for Grade 3 children in introducing two verbal

(Information and Similarities) and two non-verbal subtests of the WISC (Picture

Arrangement and Object Assembly) as games. However, these same authors found that Grade

6 children did better with “test” than with “game” instructions on the two verbal subtests. As

the verbal subtests are arguably more test-like (involving stating facts about, and conceptual

similarities between, named items), it is possible that “game” instructions did not fit as well

with the task content, leading to relatively poorer performance with these instructions.

However, it is unclear why this finding held only for children in Grade 6, and why the benefit

of “game” instructions for non-verbal subtests was not replicated in this study. There do not

appear to have been any more recent studies that have investigated the interactive effects of

task instructions and task content with children in this way.

The present study investigated the effects of funny and serious task content, and fun

and important task framing, on children’s performance on a paired-associates word-learning

task. In this task, a series of nonsense words were each associated with a novel definition and

an accompanying illustration, and the child’s task was to learn those associations. This task

was chosen because it could be easily modified to be more or less funny, and was assumed to

be one that children would find relatively neutral in intrinsic importance. The task content

was presented in two forms that had been rated by a separate group of children as either

funny or serious (“not funny”) and the task instructions were manipulated to frame the task as

either fun or important. To investigate changes related to age or to school experience,

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children in Grade 1 and in Grade 5 were assessed. Children in the first grade of Australian

government schools, the group tested here, have not typically been exposed to explicit testing

in the classroom. By Grade 5, children have had more experience with tests, for example, of

spelling lists, or times tables. Because Grade 1 children may not have yet developed a clear

understanding of the difference between a game and a test as presented at school, compared

to their older counterparts, it is hypothesised that any effects of instructions, or interaction of

instructions with task content, will be confined to children in Grade 5.

The main aims of this study were thus twofold: (1) to replicate previous findings

demonstrating that fun (defined here as funny) task content facilitates performance compared

to more serious (defined here as not funny) content, and (2) to investigate whether Bianco et

al.’s findings, that task instructions interact with task content, also apply to young children.

The following specific hypotheses were proposed:

H1: Making the content of a task funny will result in better performance than when the same

task is given with serious content.

H2: For children in Grade 5, but not in Grade 1, the effect of task instructions will interact

with task content, such that:

H2a: When a task involves funny content, instructing children that it will be fun will

result in better performance than instructing them that it is important.

H2b: When a task involves serious content, instructing children that it is important will

result in better performance than instructing them that it will be fun.

Method

Study 1 – Pre-test

Before the effects of task content on performance could be tested, it was first necessary to

identify content for the paired-associates task that children would consider to be either funny

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or serious. The goal of this pre-testing was to therefore to identify funny and serious word

definitions and illustrations for use in the main tests of our hypotheses.

Participants

Thirteen postgraduate students and academic staff volunteered to help with the initial item

selection. In addition, 35 Grade 1 children (mean age 7 years, 0 months) and 36 Grade 5

children (mean age 11 years, 0 months) were recruited from two primary schools in south-

eastern Australia with school permission and parental consent. All had English as a first

language.

Materials and Procedure

Adult participants were asked to individually rate a set of 110 written definitions as

“funny”, “not funny” or “undecided”. Definitions rated with less than 75% consensus as

either funny or not funny were discarded. Coupled with representative illustrations, the

remaining definitions were rated by child participants and subsequently ranked according to

the proportion of children who rated them as funny or not funny. The top 12 funny nouns

(e.g., a bunch of blue bananas) and top 12 funny verbs (e.g., sleeping on a panda) and the top

12 not-funny (i.e., least funny) nouns (e.g., a basket of dirty clothes) and top 12 not-funny

verbs (e.g., returning a library book) were retained for use in the main test. The mean

percentage of children rating the selected “funny” sentences as funny was 81.1 (SD 6.30) in

Grade 1 and 84.9 (SD 7.54) in Grade 5, and the mean percentage of children rating the

selected “not-funny” sentences as not funny was 77.3 (SD 13.1) in Grade 1 and 94.9 (SD

3.84) in Grade 5.

Definitions were then paired with nonsense words taken or derived from the online ARC

Nonword Database (Rastle, Harrington, & Coltheart, 2002). Each nonsense word assigned to

a funny definition (e.g., sweg) differed by one phoneme from a nonsense word assigned to the

serious definition (e.g., swog) and inflectional endings (-ing and -s) were added if necessary.

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Study 2 – Main study

Participants

Forty-one children in Grade 1 (mean age 7 years, 3 months; SD 4 months) and 43 in

Grade 5 (mean age 11 years, 3 months; SD 4 months) were recruited from two primary

schools in south-eastern Australia with school and parental consent. A further three Grade 1

and six Grade 5 children participated, but their results were omitted from analysis for being

incomplete or because the children paid insufficient attention to the task. None of these

children had participated Study 1. All participants had English as a first language, and all

were judged by their teachers to have sufficient reading ability to participate in the task.

The paired-associates task

The paired-associate word-learning task required participants to learn nonsense words

with novel definitions and pictures by first viewing a set of training cards, each consisting of

a nonsense word (e.g., swog), its associated definition (e.g., a tree that grows socks), and an

illustration (e.g., a picture of a tree with socks growing from its branches). During the

presentation of each training card, the experimenter read out the card’s nonsense word and its

definition, and asked the child to repeat the nonsense word to ensure that he or she had

attended to it. This training phase was followed by presenting participants with a set of

testing cards, one at a time, each of which contained one of the definitions and its

accompanying illustration from the testing phase, and asking children to match the definition

and illustration with the appropriate nonsense word. The target word was presented within a

2-by-2 array of nonsense words, all of which had appeared during the training phase, and all

of which were of the same word type (e.g., singular nouns, or present continuous verbs). The

child’s task was to point to, or say, the matching nonsense word.

Two versions of the task were created, each with 24 nonsense words paired with 24 novel

definitions and illustrations. The funny task used the definitions rated as most funny during

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pre-testing, while the serious task used the definitions rated as most “not funny” (least funny)

during pre-testing.

Procedure

Each participant performed both the funny and serious versions of the task, in two

sessions, approximately one week apart. Pilot testing suggested that requiring children to

learn 24 nonsense word/definition pairs in a row provided a suitable challenge for Grade 5

children, but was too difficult for Grade 1 children. Therefore, to avoid unnecessary difficulty

and distress, within each session, the Grade 1s were trained and then tested with two separate

sets of 12 cards. The Grade 5s were presented with all 24 learning cards, followed by all 24

testing cards in a single set.

Testing cards were organised so as to minimise differences between grades in terms of

how often the items had been seen in the training phase. Each testing card contained the

target nonsense word plus three distracters of the same word type (e.g., all -ing verbs). For

the Grade 1s, two distracters were taken from the previous training set of 12 nonsense words,

and the third was taken randomly from the other training set of 12. Thus, in the first testing

set of 12, Grade 1s had previously seen two of every three distracters in the training phase,

and in the second testing set, they had previously seen all three during training. Because

Grade 5s were trained on all 24 nonsense words before being tested, these older children had

seen all three distracters by the time they completed the testing phase.

Session 1. Participants were individually assessed by an experimenter in a quiet school

area. Each child was randomly assigned to either the fun or important instruction condition.

The fun instructions introduced the task as a fun game: We’re trying to find out which words

are fun to learn so that we can make a fun game for children at other schools. Today we’re

going to play a game where you’ll learn some funny new words and what they mean.

Remember, because this is a game, the main thing is for you to try and have fun so we can see

13

which words are fun to learn. In contrast, the important instructions introduced the task as an

important test: We’re trying to find out which words children are good at learning so we can

help other children at other schools. Today you’ll be doing an important test where you’ll

learn some new words and what they mean. Remember, because this is a test, it’s important

to try your best so we can help children from other schools.

Children were then randomly assigned to receive either the funny or the serious version of

the task for the first session. After giving the instructions, the experimenter explained the task

and presented a practice trial. Children were then briefly reminded of their task-framing

instructions before proceeding to the learning phase. To reduce the reading demands of the

task, the experimenter read out each nonsense word and its definition in the training phase,

and the child was asked to repeat the word. In the testing phase, the experimenter read out

each of the four nonsense words on each test card before asking the child to point to or say

which one he or she believed to be the correct word.

Session 2. Session 2 was conducted approximately one week after Session 1, with the

same procedure and the same experimenter. Children who had been seen the funny version of

the task in Session 1 now saw the serious version, and vice versa. At the beginning of their

second session, participants were retold the same task-framing instructions that they had

heard in their first session.

Results

Task results

The number of non-words correctly paired with definitions and their illustrations on the

paired-associates task was recorded for each participant, for each session, out of a maximum

score of 24 per session. These means and standard deviations are shown in Table 1.

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The data were analysed with a mixed ANOVA with one within-subjects factor of Task

Type (funny task vs. serious task), and three between-subjects factors: Grade (1 vs. 5),

Instruction Type (fun vs. important) and Order (funny task first vs. serious task first).

There was no significant difference in performance between Grade 1 children and Grade

5 children, which suggests that the two administration methods resulted in similar levels of

task difficulty. The ANOVA yielded a significant main effect for Task Type, F (1, 76) =

8.97, p < 0.01, partial ɳ2 = .11, where the funny task was performed significantly better than

the serious task. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported. Although the mean performance was

slightly better for children given instructions emphasizing importance compared to those

given instructions emphasizing fun, the main effect of Instruction Type did not achieve

significance, F(1, 76) = 1.13, n.s., nor did the interaction between Instruction Type, Task

Type, and Grade F(1, 76) = .53, n.s. Therefore, Hypotheses 2a and 2b were not supported.

The only other significant effect to emerge was a Task Type x Order interaction, F (1, 76) =

6.61, p < .05, partial ɳ2 = .08. As shown in Figure 1, this indicates that the extent to which the

funny task was performed better than the serious task was larger when participants

experienced the funny task in Session 1 followed by the serious task in Session 2, as

compared to the reverse order. Post-hoc Newman Keuls tests on this interaction revealed that

the funny task was performed significantly better than the serious task, p < .01, but only when

the funny task was performed first (Order 1), not second (Order 2). It also revealed that the

funny task was performed significantly better in Order 1 than in Order 2, p < .05, but that

performance on the serious task did not differ significantly between the two orders.

Discussion

This study aimed to investigate children’s performance on a cognitive task with funny or

serious content, and to see if this performance was influenced by whether children were

instructed that the task was a fun game or an important test. As hypothesised (Hypothesis 1),

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children performed significantly better on the funny task than the serious task, although this

effect was qualified by an interaction with the order in which the tasks were presented. The

funny task was completed more successfully than the serious task only when the funny task

was completed first; when the serious task was completed first, there was no difference in

performance between the two versions. The greater success demonstrated on the funny task is

consistent with a variety of literature highlighting the performance benefits of making tasks

more enjoyable (e.g. Cordova & Lepper, 1996; Joussemet et al., 2004; Lepper & Gilovich,

1982; Lepper & Malone, 1987; Parker & Lepper,1992). However, the order effect was an

unexpected and novel finding. Our hypotheses 2a and 2b stated that performance would

depend on the fit, or lack thereof, between the type of task and the type of instructions given.

However, the results showed that neither Grade 1 nor Grade 5 children’s performance

differed significantly according to the instructions they received, regardless of task content.

We now discuss each of these findings.

The Effect of Funny versus Serious Content in the Present Study

The first question to be addressed concerns the reasons why children performed better on

the funny task than on the serious task, at least when the funny task was performed first. It

might be argued that the humorous definitions presented in the funny task involved more

distinctive concepts and images than the more prosaic definitions from the serious version,

and that this distinctiveness may have fostered greater memory for the humorous definitions.

However, effects of distinctiveness on recall are typically only found in mixed sets of to-be-

remembered items, where some items are distinctive and others are more mundane, and not

when separate sets of all-distinctive or all-mundane items are used, as in the present study

(Waddill & McDaniel, 1998). Instead, one alternative possibility is that the funny task was

more attractive to children’s individual interests which, according to interest theory, would

translate to an intrinsic motivation involving increased task persistence and effort (Hidi,

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2001; Hidi & Harackiewicz, 2000). Interest is likely to have played an additional role in

focusing attention and freeing up cognitive resources to be used in learning the paired

associations (Hidi, 1990; Hidi, 2001; Renninger & Wozniak, 1985). Children’s superior

performance on the funny task could also have been facilitated by their experience of positive

affect, which has been shown to stimulate working memory, a function crucial for learning

(Ashby, Isen & Turken, 1999).

Why then did this advantage not appear when the serious version of the paired-associates

task was presented first? Expectancy-value theories of motivation argue that children’s

previous unpleasant experiences with a task can diminish subsequent performance (Eccles &

Wigfield, 1992). This could explain why the funny task was performed significantly better

only in the first, and not the second session, as children may have lost interest in, and the

potential to enjoy, the funny version after experiencing the less interesting serious version.

Alternatively, children’s relatively poor performance on the funny task when it was presented

second could reflect a lack of fit between the children’s expectations, created by their first

experience with the serious task, and the content of the funny version that they subsequently

experienced. Specifically, the children’s first experience with the unamusing (serious) version

of the task may have created an expectation that their second experience with the task (the

funny version) would also be unamusing. When the second task turned out to be amusing, the

lack of fit between expectations and the actual task may have caused performance to suffer.

This would be a similar effect to that found in adults by Bianco et al. (2003), except that here,

the lack of fit was between prior experience and task content, rather than task framing and

task content. This explanation could also account for the fact that children’s performance on

the serious task when it was presented second was lower (albeit not significantly so) than

when it was presented first. Having first been presented with the funny task, those children

who completed the serious task second may have had an inconsistent expectation; they may

17

have expected the second version of the task to also be funny, and this inconsistent

expectation may have decreased their performance, relative to those who experienced the

serious version of the task first.

Whatever the reason for the order effect, this study provides important confirmatory

evidence that children’s performance on cognitive tasks can be significantly improved simply

by making the content fun, compared to making it relatively serious. Moreover, this study is

the first to demonstrate this effect with “fun” defined in terms of humour. In this task, the

performance difference occurred even though the two versions of the task should have been

equally difficult, as they differed only in the funniness ratings of their definitions. The other

important finding is that in within-subjects designs, the order in which amusing and

unamusing tasks are presented can alter the relative advantage conferred by amusing task

content, which may have important implications for the cognitive testing of children. In

particular, if children are to be presented with a series of tasks, presenting them with serious

tasks before other, more enjoyable, tasks may hinder performance on those subsequent tasks.

The Effect of Fun versus Important Task Framing in the Present Study

This study was partly motivated by Bianco et al.’s (2003) findings in adults of an effect

on performance of regulatory fit: adults performed better on a task they found to be fun when

they received instructions framing the task as fun, instead of important, and better on a

serious task when instructions framed it as important, rather than fun. As previously

mentioned, if a similar effect operates in children, then this could have important implications

for the interpretation of children’s performance on a range of standard and experimental

cognitive tests, which are often introduced as “games” but which may not be perceived as

game-like by the children themselves. However, Bianco et al.’s finding was not replicated in

the present study, as instruction type did not significantly affect children’s performance, nor

did it interact with the type of task that was presented.

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One possibility is that the instructions in the present study were simply not made salient

enough to the children to have a significant impact on their performance. The instructions

were presented at the beginning of the task in each of the two testing sessions, but it is

possible that children may have thought less about, or even forgotten, the instructions as the

task went on. In contrast, the nature of the task itself (funny or serious), which did influence

performance, was constantly available, in that each new item was clearly funny or serious.

Future research on the effect of instructions on children’s performance could usefully employ

manipulation checks to see whether or not children remember the content of the instructions

they are given.

In addition, we should be cautious in concluding from the present study that task

instructions do not affect performance. The effects of instructions on task performance may

simply be smaller and more dependent on age than the effects of task content on

performance, making them harder to demonstrate. Recall that the hypothesized effect of

instructions in the present study involved a three-way interaction between task type,

instruction type, and age, which our design may have had limited power to detect. In fact,

despite there being no statistically significant effects involving instruction type, there were

some non-significant trends in the present data consistent with ideas of the regulatory fit

between task type and instruction type. In particular, Grade 5 children’s performance was

poorest in the condition where they were given a serious task, but instructed that it would be

fun. This is precisely the condition in which the mismatch between instructions and task is

greatest (or in other words, the condition where the regulatory fit is weakest); whereas the

funny task could conceivably be perceived as either fun or important, it is unlikely that the

children perceived the serious version as fun. Framing the serious task as fun may have had

some small (but in this case non-significant) detrimental effect on older children’s

performance. Therefore, despite there being no statistically significant effects of task

19

instructions in the present study, continued attention to the effects of mismatches between

instructions and task type seems warranted.

In addition, in the present study there was also a non-significant trend for better

performance in general when children were given instructions emphasizing importance,

rather than fun. Given the verbal nature of the task used in the present study, this trend is

somewhat consistent with Bridgeman et al. (1974), who found that describing verbal tasks as

important tests (rather than fun games) improved the performance of Grade 6 children.

Therefore, it may be prudent for researchers administering verbal tasks that rely on children’s

knowledge (as in Bridgeman et al., 1974) or memory (as in the present study) to describe

them as important tests, rather than fun games, especially if the content of the tasks is

relatively mundane.

Given these trends, future research should further test the hypotheses generated here by

employing a variety of cognitive tasks (e.g., standardised cognitive tests, educational

computer games), using more strongly-worded instructions, and also including control

instructions that emphasise neither fun nor importance. If task framing can play a role in

shaping children’s perceptions of cognitive tasks, then it would also be valuable to investigate

whether task framing affects children’s ongoing performance on activities which are typically

performed on a regular basis, such as learning activities at school, and sporting activities.

20

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25

Table 1

Mean Performances on the Funny and Serious Task given the Instruction Type and

Grade (Standard Deviations in Parentheses). Maximum score = 24.

Task Instructions Grade 1 Grade 5 Total

M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)

Funny Fun 9.30 (3.90)

(n = 19)

10.27 (2.43)

(n = 22)

9.81 (3.16)

(n = 41)

Important 9.43 (3.54)

(n = 22)

10.86 (3.74)

(n = 21)

10.16 (3.68)

(n = 43)

Total 9.37 (3.62) 10.57 (3.14) 9.99 (3.41)

Serious Fun 8.55 (3.28)

(n = 19)

8.14 (2.27)

(n = 22)

8.33 (2.77)

(n = 41)

Important 8.81 (3.23)

(n = 22)

9.68 (3.56)

(n = 21)

9.26 (3.40)

(n = 43)

Total 8.68 (3.22) 8.91 (3.06) 8.80 (3.12)

26

Figure 1. Children’s performance on Funny and Serious task according to task order (Order

1, n = 40, Order 2, n = 44)

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Order 1 - Funny/Not-funny Order 2 - Not-funny/Funny

Mean n

um

ber

of

corr

ect

responses

= Funny task

= Serious task

27

Appendix: Funny and serious sentence contexts for nonwords, and nonword choices

Sentence Nonword

type

Nonword choices (target nonword in bold)

FUNNY SENTENCES

Face painting with chocolate V-ing pooting bromping glarping nurching

To sit on a balloon til it pops V-to frope losh creck prish

To play Xbox for homework V-to losh creck prish slench

A tree that grows socks N-sing swog clab climp durp

Sleeping on a panda V-ing bromping glarping fatching pooting

A snail with a square shell N-sing splob durp clab swog

Clothes made out of paper N-plu nirts blags pregs tonks

To swim in puddles V-to creck prish ploch losh

Ice-cream with 50 scoops N-sing clab durp swog tranch

Koalas that like wearing pants N-plu nogs pregs blags nirts Turning your teacher into a chicken V-ing glarping rarting pooting bromping

Chairs that like to dance N-plu blags nirts pregs flinks

To make a snowman of mud V-to slench plock prish frope

Shoes for dogs N-plu flinks tonks pregs nogs

Ronald McDonald’s underwear N-plu climp tranch splob durp

Wearing undies on the outside V-ing fatching nurching rarting glarping

Necklaces made of spaghetti N-plu blags nogs flinks tonks

To watch TV upside down V-to plock slench frope losh

Playing Frisbee with pizza V-ing rarting bromping nurching fatching

2

A snake with polka dots N-sing swog climp tranch splob

Earmuffs made of muffins N-plu nogs flinks tonks nirts

Putting marshmallows between

your toes

V-ing pooting fatching nurching rarting

A bunch of blue bananas N-sing clab splob tranch climp

To ride a cow to school V-to creck frope plock slench

SERIOUS SENTENCES

Folding up your own clothes V-ing lishing blarping crocking pooning

A brown and blue jumper N-sing nug sweg clob prig

A small grey building N-sing sweg clob nug glonk

Sweeping the floor V-ing lishing pooning blarping slenching

A few empty tissue boxes N-plu fonks blegs mirts darps

Books with no pictures N-plu mirts darps splabs blegs

A bike with flat tyres N-sing clob nug trinch sweg

Walking to school V-ing blarping narting pooning lishing

Scratched DVDs N-plu blegs mirts darps clemps

To set the table V-to trimp narch prash brope

To eat vegetables for dinner V-to narch prash brope plack

To have one hand in your pocket V-to fitch brope narch prash

A TV that does not work N-sing glonk prig nug trinch

Doing the dishes V-ing blarping narting crocking slanching

A basket of dirty clothes N-sing sweg trinch glonk prig

Making your parents’ bed V-ing narting crocking slanching lishing

To return a library book V-to plack trimp brope fitch

Washing your own clothes V-ing slanching pooning narting crocking

3

Piles of cracked plates N-plu fonks mirts splabs clemps

To turn off a leaky tap V-to narch fitch trimp plack

Scrunched-up paper bags N-plu blegs splabs clemps fonks

Some old dirty socks N-plu clemps fonks darps splabs

To pick up rubbish in the yard V-to prash plack fitch trimp

A broken watch on the ground N-sing trinch clob prig glonk

Note. V = verb (in to or ing form), N = noun (in singular (sing) or plural (plu) form)