Comprehension and Hemispheric Processing of Irony in Schizophrenia.

Ronit Saban-Bezalel,Nira Mashal

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00943

Abstract

Studies focusing on the comprehension of figurative language among schizophrenia patients (SZ) reveal their difficulties comprehending such language and their tendency to interpret it literally. The present study investigated hemispheric processing and comprehension of irony in 16 SZ patients and 18 typically developing (TD) adults. Two experimental tasks were used: an online divided visual field experiment and an offline irony questionnaire. The results show an atypical reversal of hemispheric processing of irony in SZ patients as compared to TD adults. While the TD group demonstrated a right hemisphere advantage in processing irony, SZ patients demonstrated a left hemisphere advantage. Greater comprehension of irony was associated with decreased negative symptoms. In addition, under conditions that not involving a time restriction, the SZ patients’ performance improved. Our findings reinforce those of previous studies suggesting that brain lateralization is atypical in SZ patients.

Highlights

Figurative language serves many of our communicative goals, such as being eloquent or humorous, or clarifying our intentions and it common in everyday discourse (Roberts and Kreuz, 1994)
The current study investigated irony comprehension and hemispheric processing for irony in schizophrenia patients (SZ) as compared to healthy adults
The study reveals three main findings: first, a comparison between the two tasks that tested irony comprehension indicates that SZ have a certain ability to comprehend irony but this capacity depends on the task characteristics

Summary

Introduction

Figurative language serves many of our communicative goals, such as being eloquent or humorous, or clarifying our intentions and it common in everyday discourse (Roberts and Kreuz, 1994). Comprehending figurative language requires the listener to grasp the speaker’s communicative intention and go beyond the literal meaning of the words in the utterance (Berman and Ravid, 2010). Irony is one form of figurative language, which is important in creating social bonds (Clark and Gerrig, 1984) and serves as a linguistic means for expressing humor (Roberts and Kreuz, 1994) as well as criticism (Dews and Winner, 1995). Studies have shown that irony is common in everyday discourse (Gibbs, 2000) and frequent in computer-mediated communication (Whalen et al, 2013). In the current study we investigated this type of irony comprehension

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