The role of prosody and context in sarcasm comprehension: Behavioral and fMRI evidence

Abstract

A hearer's perception of an utterance as sarcastic depends on integration of the heard statement, the discourse context, and the prosody of the utterance, as well as evaluation of the incongruity among these aspects. The effect of prosody in sarcasm comprehension is evident in everyday conversation, but little is known about its underlying mechanism or neural substrates. To elucidate the neural underpinnings of sarcasm comprehension in the auditory modality, we conducted a functional MRI experiment with 21 adult participants. The participants were provided with a short vignette in which a child had done either a good or bad deed, about which a parent made a positive comment. The participants were required to judge the degree of the sarcasm in the parent's positive comment (praise), which was accompanied by either positive or negative affective prosody. The behavioral data revealed that an incongruent combination of utterance and the context (i.e., the parent's positive comment on a bad deed by the child) induced perception of sarcasm. There was a significant interaction between context and prosody: sarcasm perception was enhanced when positive prosody was used in the context of a bad deed or, vice versa, when negative prosody was used in the context of a good deed. The corresponding interaction effect was observed in the rostro-ventral portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus corresponding to Brodmann's Area (BA) 47. Negative prosody incongruent with a positive utterance (praise) activated the bilateral insula extending to the right inferior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex, and brainstem. Our findings provide evidence that the left inferior frontal gyrus, particularly BA 47, is involved in integration of discourse context and utterance with affective prosody in the comprehension of sarcasm.