Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker's second‐order intention

Abstract

This study investigated how children detect the attitude behind irony and distinguish it from the attitude conveyed by a white lie. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) the ability to distinguish the second‐order intentions of the liar vs. ironist (i.e. what each wants the listener to know) should be a prerequisite for the ability to distinguish ironic from deceptive attitude; (2) the presence of distinctive intonations (sarcastic *** sincere) should facilitate the distinction between ironic and deceptive attitude. Five‐ to 7‐year‐olds heard two stories which ended in either a deceptive or an ironic statement. Children distinguished between the stories in two ways: (a) in terms of whether the speaker wanted the listener to believe him or not (second‐order intention judgement); (b) in terms of whether the speaker was being mean or nice (attitude judgement). In one condition, the final utterances were distinguished by intonation (sarcastic for the irony, sincere for the lie); in the other condition, the utterances were spoken identically, without intonation, in the form of an indirect quote. Results supported the first but not the second hypothesis. Almost all children who failed to make correct second‐order judgements also failed to distinguish which speaker was being mean (ironist) and which was being nice (white liar). However, those who succeeded on the second‐order question but failed the attitude question were equally distributed across the intonation and no‐intonation conditions. Thus, for children of this age, intonation failed to facilitate the ability to distinguish the negative attitude conveyed by irony from the positive attitude conveyed by a white lie.