Background: The attention span of a lecture is roughly 15 minutes. After this time, it has been observed that the number of students who pay attention begins to drop dramatically, leading to loss in the retention of lecture material. Aims: The present study was undertaken with the aim of examining the effectiveness of humour when it was used as an intervention to prolong the attention span. Methods and Material: This interventional, randomized, control trial was undertaken among a total of 90 medical students who were in their 4th semester. Based on the roll number, the students of the whole class were equally divided into group A and group B by using a lottery method. Group A was the control group and group B was the experimental group. For both the groups, four lectures were delivered on the same topic, with the difference that in the group A classes, no intervention was used, while in group B, humour was used as an intervention. The outcome of this study was measured by using ?Class response? and ?Observations?. For the class response, a pretested, 5 point ?Likert? scale questionnaire was used. For the ?observations?, two clinical psychologists were involved. Data was collected from both the groups A and B in the first and last lectures. Statistical analysis used: SPSS for Windows (version 10.0) by the Chi-Square test. Results: The students agreed that they could better understand the concept of the lecture (68.17%), feel more comfortable in class (74.99%), have increased attention power (74.99%) and have the perception that the teacher was friendlier to them (74.99%). In the lecture four, it was observed that behaviour that implied negative attitudes such as turning up late and yawning were frequent in group A, whereas behaviour which indicated positive attitudes such as writing notes and eye contact were noted more frequently in group B. Conclusion: Humour, when used as a teaching aid, has a positive impact on the students? perceptions and behaviour towards teaching.
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