The interest in the effects of television violence on children has resulted in thousands of studies over the last 20 years. Previous research on laughter has generated many laughter theories and several studies show that laughter may influence mirth expressions and funniness ratings of material. The purpose of this study was to determine if a television laugh track affected children's perceptions of television violence. A review of the literature covered the areas of laughter and television laugh tracks, children's processing of television, and children's television violence perceptions. Forty-two children, aged 6 to 8 years old, were divided into two groups. One group watched a televised violent scene accompanied by a laugh track, and the other group watched the same scene without a laugh track. The children then answered questions on a Likert scale about their perceptions of the pain and violence in the scene. The data was analyzed using the t-statistic. At a .05 significance level, there were no significant differences between the control and treatment groups, supporting the null hypothesis. These results supported previous research showing that laugh tracks and laughter in general do not always increase funniness or other ratings, and that children may not be identifying closely with the characters. Suggestions for future research were presented. / Graduation date: 1993