Faculty Publications and Conference Presentations

The procedure for the development of a measure of humour appreciation among a convenience sample of 53 primary school children attending a one-week summer program held in Hong Kong is described. Two sets of visual stimuli depicting pictures of local celebrities portrayed either veridically (congruously) or incongruously were established from a pool of 30 pictorial items. The pictures were ranked for their humour properties yielding a 16-item test battery. Analyses of children's responses clearly indicated that incongruous pictures were rated as significantly funnier than congruous pictures.

The development of a humor measure was described in a brief report in this journal. In that report, a series of suitable-congruous and incongruous pictures were developed with a community sample of children. The findings of that study were consistent with those reported by others (Chik, 2001; Masten, 1989; Schultz, 1972), indicating that incongruity is an essential component of humor appreciation. With a larger (n=140) and more representative sample, we embarked on a follow-up validation study. The findings of the present study provide further support for the universality of the incongruity as an essential component of hum or appreciation across age and cultures.

新课程改革进行实验已3年有余,在取得成绩的基础上还存在一些问题,以至影响其进一步的推行。在参考了其它国家变革的历程后,本文提出了学校改进这一教育变革的策略,简述了学校改进的发展阶段,详述了实施学校改进不仅能够改善目前我国新课程改革所遇到的问题,还可以超越新课程。