Theorists generally agree that humor is a response to incongruity in a safe and playful context that may or may not accompanied by smiling or laughter, incongruities must accord with the cognitive level of children, too easy or too difficult incongruities will not be produced humor. They differ in their interpretation of pre-requites and onset of humor. McGhee (1979) and Shultz(1976) argued that children are not able to appreciate humor until about 18 months, with the advent of symbolic play, and proposed four-staged theoretical model of incongruity-based humor development. Pien& Rothbart(1980) argued that humor appreciation begins at around 4 months, incongruity humor experience involves only the recognition of incongruity, symbolic play capabilities are not necessary. Recent researches tested these theories. Chaney (1993) and Johnson (1997) found young children’s humor generally fit into McGhee’s developmental framework, but are not supportive of fixed sequence or neat stages in development. Loizou (2005), Reddy(1991, 2001) and Stroufe& Wunsch(1972) support Pien& Rothbart’s theory (1980) such as one infant at 15 months presented absurd and empowered humor. Infants begin to be active humorists as well as appreciative respondents from around 10 months of age in acts as clowning , teasing, and laughing at funny faces and sounds, or events involving socially inappropriate or incongruous acts such as mother waddling like a duck. 10 and 12-month infants produce discrepant events such as replacing the cloth back into their mother’s mouth when it has been removed. Humor is an exclusive and complicated human phenomenon, depends on a lot of factors such as personality, emotion, social and intellectual abilities (Paulos, 1980). This study investigated humor of young toddlers toward daily objects and events through the pre-requisite acts such as a) cognitive skills: play capabilities, functional use of objects, symbolic play and problem solving; b) social skills: self-regulation/responsibility, interpersonal skills and self-concept, which serve as indicators to humorous behaviors of young toddlers (Toni W. Linder, 2003 ; Johnson-Martin, 2004).

Three toddlers were observed in an infant room of a nursery school in the condition without any other needs predominating (e.g. hunger), one Chinese boy, 20 months, who has been observed since he was born, two Greek girls, one is 14 months, one is 18 months, they have been observed for two weeks (70 hours). Cognitive and social skills assessment are based with small adaptation on Toni W. Linder (2003) and Johnson-Martin(2004). Early humor was observed through recoded and slightly modified activities from mother or caregiver according to Scroufe and Wunsch(1972) , McGhee(1979), and Reddy (1991, 2001) with 5 types: 1) odd sounds; 2)odd expressions; 3)odd body movement; 4)acting absurd; 5) incongruous labeling of daily objects or events.

Early results showed that young toddlers under 18 months of age with advanced cognitive and social skills development perform humorous acts.