In conversational laughter, people co-ordinate their speech and their laughter very tightly – for example, people consistently laugh at the end of sentences, even if they are conversing in sign language (where they could, in theory, be laughing the whole time).
Westbury noticed a pattern: Participants would consistently laugh at some made up words but not at others.
The show is consistently, laugh-out-loud funny every week, with a new adventure or conflict ready for our heroes to overcome.
They consistently laugh at the poor child waddling around trying to carry all the excess weight.
Sure, he still consistently laughed at his own jokes louder than the audience would, but at least we didn't feel we were both suffering through the monologue.
It was the first part of the episode that made me consistently laugh, and it also worked because I like Jack and Liz – and like that the show remains committed to a complete lack of romantic tension between them".
For months, as opposition figures have speculated about the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia during the election, Donald Trump diehards have consistently laughed off these stories as "fake news".
The performers, seen against Tony Walton's atypically uninspired sets, proceed stiffly: they consistently get laughs for their characters' oddities, but they seem not so much to possess those traits as to present them.
Certain types of jokes seem to consistently elicit laughs even though we've all heard them before.
Ostensibly a lecture on the history of HMS Nottingham, complete with powerpoint presentation, Sweet's manic, squeakily nervous persona and the increasing silliness of his digressions keep the energy level and the laughs consistently high.
It's a world away from the slick glibness that marks British TV's perpetually ineffective attempts to ape The Daily Show, coming up with a more thoughtful model that offers real insight into serious issues, as well as consistently delivering big laughs.
