A study was conducted to investigate the effects of humor on the performance of college freshmen on the Nelson Denny Reading Post Test. The subjects, 36 college freshmen from two developmental reading improvement classes, were randomly assigned to experimental A or B or control sample groups. Students had previously taken forms F and C of the test as pretests while forms E and D were used as the posttest. Experimental group A was given an article of humorous nature entitled "Turds" to read prior to taking the posttest, while experimental group B was given an article of a general nature entitled "Sinkholes." The control group received no article for prereading prior to the administration of the posttest. Each student in both experimental samples was given approximately ten minutes to read the articles provided. The Nelson-Denny Reading Tests were distributed immediately afterward. Results indicated that the students reading a humorous article did significantly better on the tests than the control group, but that group A scored higher than group B. It can thus be concluded that by having students read material of any sort prior to engaging in a standardized reading test, performance can be improved. (An appendix includes sample articles given to students.) (DF)