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Smiling and laughing appear very early during the first year of life, but little is known about how infants come to appraise a stimulus as humorous. This short-term longitudinal study explored infant humor perception from 5 to 7 months of age as a function of parental affect during an absurd event. Using a within-participants design, parents alternated smiling/laughing with emotional neutrality while acting absurdly toward their infants. Group comparisons showed that infants (N = 37) at all ages smiled at the event regardless of parental affect but did so significantly longer at 5 and 6 months, and more often and sooner at 7 months, when parents provided humor cues. Similarly, sequential analyses revealed that after gazing at the event, 7-month-olds were more likely to smile at it only when parents provided humor cues and were comparatively more likely to look away when parents were neutral. Thus, starting at 5 months of age, parental affect influenced infants' affect toward an absurd event, an effect that was magnified at 7 months. These results are discussed in the context of emotional contagion, regulation, and the emergence of social referencing.

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Social referencing refers to infants' use of caregivers as emotional referents in ambiguous situations (Walden, 1993). Studies of social referencing typically require ambulation, thereby over-looking younger, non-ambulatory infants (i.e., ≤8-months) and resulting in a widespread assumption that young infants do not employ this strategy. Using a novel approach that does not require mobility, we found that when parents provided unsolicited affective cues during an ambiguous-absurd (i.e., humorous) event, 6-month-olds employ one component of social referencing, social looking Additionally, 6-month-olds who did not laugh at the event were significantly more likely to look toward parents than their counterparts who found the event funny. Sequential analyses revealed that, following a reference to a smiling parent, 6-month olds were more likely to smile at the parent, but by 12 months were more likely to smile at the event suggesting that older infants are influenced by parental affect in humorous situations. The developmental implications of these findings are discussed, as well as the usefulness of studying humor for understanding important developmental phenomena.

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BACKGROUND: More publications are describing autoantibodies specific to tumour-associated antigens in a range of solid tumours, including lung cancer. Importantly, these antibodies have even been described as being detectable before the tumour becomes clinically evident, making them interesting targets for use as novel biomarkers in lung cancer. OBJECTIVE: This review provides an overview of the current literature regarding autoantibodies in lung cancer, and addresses the key question of whether the measurement of circulating autoantibodies can be utilised in lung cancer for diagnosis, screening, prognosis and monitoring clinical outcome. METHODS: The literature used in this review was retrieved from PubMed using a combination of the following keywords: antigen array, autoantibodies, diagnosis, low-dose spiral computed tomography, lung cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, panel assay, prognosis, protein microarray, risk factors, SEREX, screening, small cell lung cancer and tumour-associated antigen. RESULTS: Autoantibodies that react with autologous cellular antigens have been described in pre-diagnostic and diagnostic samples from patients with small cell, non-small cell and other forms of lung cancer, and can sometimes be correlated with clinico-pathological parameters. CONCLUSION: The measurement of autoantibodies to a panel of tumour-associated antigens has the potential to provide clinicians with the opportunity to detect early amplification of the carcinogenic signal, thereby providing a sensitive, specific and simple screening tool for the early diagnosis and subsequent early clinical intervention of lung cancer.