Early prosodic marking of irony and its perception in autistic and neurotypical adults

Abstract

The present study examines the utterance-initial prosodic marking of irony and its perception in neurodiverse populations. We ask (i) whether speakers and listeners use prosody to mark irony in the early, “pre-target” portion of an utterance (before a “target” word most closely associated with ironic intent), (ii) whether individuals vary in how they mark irony, and (iii) whether listener accuracy varies by speaker or autism condition. Eight American English speakers were recorded producing utterances presented in contexts conducive to either irony or sincerity. The “pre-target” parts were presented in a forced-choice experiment to 55 autistic and 45 neurotypical listeners and were examined for syllable duration and F0-related properties (maximum, minimum, range, mean, and wiggliness [Wehrle, Cangemi, Krüger, & Grice. (2018) Proceedings of AISV]). Results show that speakers mark irony in the “pre-target” region, with duration being the most salient feature, and wiggliness and F0-range being variable. Most listeners recognize irony from “pre-target” fragments, but there is variation in how well each speaker is perceived. Whether the listener is autistic or neurotypical does not predict accuracy. Results, thus, show utterance-initial prosodic marking to contribute to irony recognition, with the proviso that speaker and listener variation be taken into account.