Alcoholism impairs a person's ablity to understand jokes and find them funny, according to a new German study.

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BERLIN: Problem drinkers often don't know how to take a joke or understand a punchline, according to German researchers.

In their study of 29 recovering alcoholic patients in a clinic in the western German city of Bochum, participants were tested to measure their mood, intellectual ability, memory, psychomotor skills and capacity to appreciate jokes.

The results were compared with those from a 'control group' of 29 healthy people. In the humour test, subjects were read jokes, and given a choice of several punchlines for each. Some of the punchlines were more coherent and logical than others.

For example, one of the jokes tested on the subjects began as follows:
It was Mother's Day. Anna and her brother had told their mother to stay in bed that morning. She read her book and looked forward to breakfast. After a long wait she finally went downstairs. Anna and her brother were both eating at the table.

The subjects were given a choice of four punchlines:
a) Anna said: "Hi mum, we didn't expect you to be awake so early."
b) Anna picked up an egg and smashed it on her brother's head.
c) Her brother said: "We have a new teacher at our school."
d) Anna said: "It's a surprise for Mother's Day. We cooked our own breakfast."

The researchers found a marked difference in the responses of the two groups, with less than 68 per cent of the alcoholics able to pick the right punchline, which the researchers said was option 'd', versus 92 per cent in the healthy control group.

The groups were also tested for aptitude at predicting and understanding other people's behaviour, known as 'mentalising ability'.

"Alcoholics also fared less well in the working memory tests and mentalising ability tests, prompting speculation that deficits in these areas can impact upon a problem drinker's capacity to understand jokes and find them funny," the researchers said.

According to the World Health Organisation, in 2004 there were roughly 76 million diagnosable alcoholics in the world, and alcohol causes nearly 2 million deaths every year.

The authors said in a synopsis of the study, published in the journal Addiction, that an inability to understand others' mental states and a lack of sense of humour can affect social skills and interpersonal relationships. This, in turn, can impair rehabilitation and recovery.

The authors, from the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, called for special treatment of alcoholics to take these deficits into account.