Dartmouth Medical School professor William Hudenko published a study on laughter in autistic children. (photo courtesy of DMS)
Anyone hearing more laughter than usual around Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) in the coming months need not worry: Serious research is going on.
Before joining the DMS faculty in the summer, psychologist William J. Hudenko completed a study that recently appeared in the journal Autism, in which he and a colleague observed that the unguarded “voiced” laughter of children with autism appears to evoke more positive responses in most listeners than does the more calculated, socially-driven laughter of “typically-developing children.” Hudenko hopes to follow up on these findings at Dartmouth, with the goal of broadening knowledge about the barriers to social interactions of children with autism.
Read the full story, published by Dartmouth Medical School news on 09/09/11.
