Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA13356 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 10 Oct 2001 22:17:34 +0100 User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 17:13:00 -0400 Subject: is glee memetic? From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B7EA2CBF.BEB8%bbenzon@mindspring.com> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Child Dev 1975 Mar;46(1):53-61
An ecological study of glee in small groups of preschool children.
Sherman LW.
A phenomenon called group glee was studied in videotpes of 596 formal
lessons in a preschool. This was characterized by joyful screaming,
laughing, and intense physical acts which occurred in simultaneous bursts or
which spread in a contagious fashion from one child to another. A variety of
precipitating factors were identified, the most prevalent being teacher
requests for volunteers, unstructured lags in lessons, gross physical-motor
actions, and cognitive incongruities. Distinctions between group glee and
laughter were pointed out. While most events of glee did not disrupt the
ongoing lesson, those which did tended to produce a protective reaction on
the part of teachers. Group glee tended to occur most often in large groups
(7-9 children) and in groups containing both sexes. The latter finding was
related to Darwin's theory of differentiating vocal signals in animals and
man.
PMID: 1132281 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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