Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Despite the universal phenomenon of humor across societies and communities, humor comprehension in second language (L2) speakers is often overlooked. It is unclear whether L2 speakers rely primarily on sociocultural proficiency or linguistic proficiency when they process humor in a foreign language. We conducted two experiments examining the direct association of sociocultural proficiency and linguistic proficiency in humor comprehension behaviors in the visual and auditory modalities. Across both modalities, results revealed a significant association of social connectedness with humor detection and appreciation in non-native speakers. Furthermore, individual differences in language proficiency and social connectedness were shown to be more relevant for humor ratings in the visual modality. The finding suggests that L2 speakers’ humor comprehension performance was related to sociocultural proficiency and integration with the L2 community.