Does laughter make everything funnier? Implicit laughter processing in autistic and non-autistic adults

Abstract What does laughter mean, and why does laughter make things funnier? Using a novel implicit measure of laughter processing, we added genuine or posed laughter to various forms of comedic stimuli to examine the similarities and differences in the modulatory effects of laughter between autistic and non-autistic people. In non-autistic adults, adding laughter increased the perceived funniness of humorous stimuli, including jokes, burps and slapstick videos, with genuine laughter leading to funnier ratings than posed laughter. However, these laughter modulation effects were not consistently observed in autistic adults. While the laughter modulation effect was present for jokes, it was less pronounced than in non-autistic adults and was absent when modulating the funniness of burps and slapstick videos. Overall, our findings highlight the distinct ways autistic people experience the implicit processing of laughter, which may impact social communication in daily interactions. This study offers a novel perspective on how the interplay between humour and laughter contribute to everyday social experiences.