Funny Babies

Whether it’s playing peek-a-boo, tickling their tummy or blowing raspberries, parents usually have a failsafe formula for making their baby chuckle. What most of us probably haven’t done is stopped to think about why babies laugh at these things. Step forward Dr Caspar Addyman, a Research Fellow at London Birkbeck University’s Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development — or the BabyLab as it has been dubbed. He is overseeing one of the biggest studies into what makes babies laugh, and why. ‘Understanding babies also helps us understand adults,’ he says. ‘Babies are little scientists. They are discovering the world and through them we can discover a great deal, too.’ So passionate is he that Dr Addyman — a banker turned psychologist who doesn’t have any children — is funding the research himself. He’s created a detailed questionnaire for parents, as well as asking them to send in videos and short reports of what makes their babies laugh