Processing Of Irony Research Articles

Children's processing of written irony: An eye-tracking study

Ironic language is challenging for many people to understand, and particularly for children. Comprehending irony is considered a major milestone in children's development, as it requires inferring the intentions of the person who is being ironic. However, the theories of irony comprehension generally do not address developmental changes, and there are limited data on children's processing of verbal irony. In the present pre-registered study, we examined, for the first time, how children process and comprehend written irony in comparison to adults. Seventy participants took part in the study (35 10-year-old children and 35 adults). In the experiment, participants read ironic and literal sentences embedded in story contexts while their eye movements were recorded. They also responded to a text memory question and an inference question after each story, and children's levels of reading skills were measured. Results showed that for both children and adults comprehending written irony was more difficult than for literal texts (the “irony effect”) and was more challenging for children than for adults. Moreover, although children showed longer overall reading times than adults, processing of ironic stories was largely similar between children and adults. One group difference was that for children, more accurate irony comprehension was qualified by faster reading times whereas for adults more accurate irony comprehension involved slower reading times. Interestingly, both age groups were able to adapt to task context and improve their irony processing across trials. These results provide new insights about the costs of irony and development of the ability to overcome them.

Quotation marks and the processing of irony in English: evidence from a reading time study

Abstract Quotation marks are used for different purposes in language, one of which is to signal that something has to be interpreted in an ironic way, as in the utterance What a “nice” day! said on a rainy and cold day. The present contribution describes a reading time experiment in which we analyzed the processing and understanding of ironic written sentences with or without quotation marks and asked whether and how these marks affect the subjects’ reading of the sentences. Native speakers of English were exposed to two contexts and a subsequent target sentence. Semantically, context and target sentences were connected either ironically or literally or were entirely unrelated. Each of these three meaning conditions contained quotation marks or not. Within the target sentences, which were identical across the different conditions, we measured the reading time before the respective meaning (ironic, literal, unrelated) was revealed, at the phrase that made the scenario ironic, literal, or unrelated, and at the end of the sentence. Furthermore, having read the target sentence, subjects rated how well this sentence fit the preceding context, and the time they needed for their judgment was recorded as well. Results clearly show that quotation marks increase the processing burden first, independently of the meaning specification in a sentence, but then play a crucial and beneficial role in the processing and recognition of irony. We reflect upon these findings against the background of semantic and pragmatic theories of quotation.

Understanding Irony in Literary Texts: A Cognitive Approach

Cognitive approaches are particularly appealing when it comes to phenomena that can be adequately described only when their mental processing is taken into account. The phenomenon of irony is one of them. While there has been a plethora of semantic and structural analytic approaches in literary studies and linguistics that have focused on irony, the question is to what extent irony is already inherent in the texts themselves, to what extent it is only recognizable from contexts, and whether we recognize irony as such equally at all.In this article, we combine approaches from literary studies, cognitive psychology, and psycholinguistics in a corpus-based study. We ask whether irony is recognizable from certain textual features, such as genre or style. To determine this, we undertook a questionnaire study that indeed supports the conclusion that it is. It is the goal of the article to stimulate further contributions of this kind in order to explore the potential of a cognitive approach for the processing of irony in literary texts, providing a sound basis for future neuro-aesthetic investigations.

Irony and Perspective-Taking in Children: The Roles of Norm Violations and Tone of Voice.

In order to understand most, if not any communicative act, the listener needs to make inferences about what the speaker intends to convey. This perspective-taking process is especially challenging in the case of nonliteral uses of language such as verbal irony (e.g., “Thanks for your help!” uttered to someone who has not provided the expected support). Children have been shown to have difficulties with the comprehension of irony well into the school years, but the factors that hamper or facilitate children’s perspective-taking in irony comprehension are not well understood. This study takes as its starting point the relevance-theoretic echoic analysis of verbal irony, and focuses on two of irony’s distinctive features as defined by this theory: (i) the normative bias and (ii) the characteristic tone of voice. In this study, we investigated the comprehension of irony in children aged 3–8. We manipulated these two factors, namely, the violation of different types of norms and the use of different tones of voice – to see how they affected children’s processing and interpretation of irony. Using an irony comprehension task that combined picture selection and eye-tracking, we found that the type of norm violation affected 4-to 5-year-olds’ offline understanding of irony, with a better performance on moral compared with social norm violations. Tone of voice had an effect on gaze behavior in adults, but not children, although a parodic, pretense-oriented tone of voice tended to lead to more looks to the angry compared with the happy emoticon at the offset of the ironical utterance, potentially facilitating children’s irony understanding. Our results show that the understanding of irony can be detected on explicit measures around age 6 – with the emergence of second-order perspective-taking abilities – but that a sensitivity to some of irony’s features can be detected several years earlier. Finally, our study provides a novel input to the debate on the existence of a so-called literal stage in pragmatic development, in particular regarding 3-year-olds’ differential performance on the offline and online measures of irony understanding, suggesting that they are not naively mistaking ironical utterances for “ordinary” literal ones.

Processing of irony in text: A systematic review of eye-tracking studies.

Theoretical models of irony comprehension pose different hypotheses about the time course of resolving ironic interpretation of an utterance, and they propose several context-, phrase-, and reader-related factors that influence the ease or difficulty of processing irony. In recent years, these factors have been examined using eye tracking, which allows a detailed analysis of time course of reading processes. In this article, we present a meta-analysis of the eye-tracking studies on irony and then present a systematic review of the factors that have been shown to influence the time course of irony processing. The review will point to future directions in how eye tracking could best be applied to further develop the current theoretical views. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Second language experience impacts first language irony comprehension among bilingual adults.

Recently, core components of irony processing (e.g., mental-state reasoning, executive control, and metalinguistic awareness) have been tentatively linked to bilingual experience. Thus, we investigated whether bilingual experience modulates irony comprehension during first language (L1) reading and also how bilingual adults comprehend irony in positive versus negative contexts (i.e., ironic compliments vs. criticisms, respectively). We deliver 3 main findings. First, bilinguals are faster at processing ironic criticisms than ironic compliments, and they find ironic criticisms more sensible than ironic compliments in their L1, much like past findings among monolinguals. Second, individual differences in bilingual experience modulate comprehension of ironic statements. Specifically, readers with high global second language (L2) proficiency find ironic statements more sensible than readers with low global L2 proficiency, regardless of the valence of the preceding context. Third, individual differences in global L2 proficiency further predict the speed of L1 irony comprehension: following a positive scenario, greater global L2 proficiency patterns with faster processing of irony compared to literal statements. Together, these data suggest that second language experience may be linked to irony processing in the first language. While the precise mechanism underlying this relationship remains open, potential sources may be rooted in flexible social cognition or executive functions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Processing of Irony in Text: A Systematic Review of Eye-Tracking Studies

Supplemental Material for Processing of Irony in Text: A Systematic Review of Eye-Tracking Studies

What is the difference between irony and sarcasm? An fMRI study

Verbal irony is a figure of speech that communicates the opposite of what is said, while sarcasm is a form of irony that is directed at a person, with the intent to criticise. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with the aim of mapping the neural networks involved in the processing of sarcastic and non-sarcastic irony. Participants read short texts describing an interaction between two characters, which ended in either a literal, sarcastic, or non-sarcastic ironic comment. Results showed that the mentalising network (mPFC) and semantic network (IFG) were more activated for non-sarcastic irony than for literal controls. This would suggest that interpreting this kind of language involves understanding that the speaker does not mean what they literally say, as well as processes involved in conflict detection and resolution. Sarcastic irony recruited more of the semantic network, as well as areas associated with humour appreciation and subcortical structures, indicating that more complex neural mechanisms underlie the comprehension of sarcastic versus non-sarcastic irony.

Metaphor and Irony in the Public Criminological Discourse of Lithuania

This article discusses metaphor and irony as discursive strategies employed by the Lithuanian media while construing the imagery of crime, criminal, and criminality. The method applied to analyse metaphor and irony in Lithuanian criminological discourse combines the framework offered by conceptual metaphor theory with corpus linguistics. First of all, metaphorical and ironical expressions were inventoried, and then conceptual paradigms were reconstructed from them. The conceptual-level analysis revealed that the relations between the conceptual domains of metaphor and irony are processed by different types of mapping (similarity [metaphor] vs. dissimilarity [irony]). Despite differences in the processing of cross-domain mapping, metaphor and irony realised in public criminological discourse carry out the same or very similar rhetorical and social functions. The main function of these discursive strategies is the vivid expression of emotional attitudes and values directed at the criminal—the text adresser evaluates the criminal and crime negatively, dissociates from the offender, and isolates him symbolically from our community. In this way, the contemporary Lithuanian media constructs and shapes the community’s approach to particular social phenomena—crime, criminal, and criminality.

Comprehension and Hemispheric Processing of Irony in Schizophrenia.

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.

The effects of intervention on the comprehension of irony and on hemispheric processing of irony in adults with ASD

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience difficulty in comprehending figurative language in general and irony in particular. The current study measured the effectiveness of a short-term intervention in enhancing the comprehension of irony. Twenty-nine adults with ASD and 22 typically developing (TD) adults participated in the study. Participants with ASD were randomly assigned to a study (intervention) or control (passive intervention) group. TD participants were also assigned to a passive intervention control group. The intervention improved comprehension of irony in the ASD group. Furthermore, responses to ironic and literal targets were similar within each hemisphere prior to the intervention within the ASD study group, but after the intervention responses lateralized to the right. Thus, following the intervention, participants with ASD demonstrated a pattern of hemispheric processing of ironic target words that resembled the pattern seen in the TD group prior to the intervention. Our findings suggest that an intervention that focuses on comprehension of irony improves performance of adults with ASD and affects the pattern of hemispheric processing of irony.

Hemispheric Processing of Idioms and Irony in Adults With and Without Pervasive Developmental Disorder.

Previous studies on individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) have pointed to difficulties in comprehension of figurative language. Using the divided visual field paradigm, the present study examined hemispheric processing of idioms and irony in 23 adults with PDD and in 24 typically developing (TD) adults. The results show that adults with PDD were relatively unimpaired in understanding figurative language. While the TD group demonstrated a right hemisphere advantage in processing the non-salient meanings of idioms as well as the ironic endings of paragraphs, the PDD group processed these stimuli bilaterally. Our findings suggest that brain lateralization is atypical in adults with PDD. Successful performance along with bilateral brain activation suggests that the PDD group uses a compensation mechanism.

Processing of Written Irony in Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Movement Study.

Previous research has suggested that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulties understanding others communicative intent and with using contextual information to correctly interpret irony. We recorded the eye movements of typically developing (TD) adults ASD adults when they read statements that could either be interpreted as ironic or non-ironic depending on the context of the passage. Participants with ASD performed as well as TD controls in their comprehension accuracy for speaker's statements in both ironic and non-ironic conditions. Eye movement data showed that for both participant groups, total reading times were longer for the critical region containing the speaker's statement and a subsequent sentence restating the context in the ironic condition compared to the non-ironic condition. The results suggest that more effortful processing is required in both ASD and TD participants for ironic compared with literal non-ironic statements, and that individuals with ASD were able to use contextual information to infer a non-literal interpretation of ironic text. Individuals with ASD, however, spent more time overall than TD controls rereading the passages, to a similar degree across both ironic and non-ironic conditions, suggesting that they either take longer to construct a coherent discourse representation of the text, or that they take longer to make the decision that their representation of the text is reasonable based on their knowledge of the world.

Processing of Written Irony: An Eye Movement Study

We examined processing of written irony by recording readers' eye movements while they read target phrases embedded either in ironic or non-ironic story context. After reading each story, participants responded to a text memory question and an inference question tapping into the understanding of the meaning of the target phrase. The results of Experiment 1 (N = 52) showed that readers were more likely to reread ironic than non-ironic target sentences during first-pass reading as well as during later look-backs. Experiment 2 (N = 60) examined individual differences related to working memory capacity (WMC), Sarcasm Self-Report Scale (SSS), and need for cognition (NFC) in the processing of irony. The results of Experiment 2 suggest that WMC, but not SSS or NFC, plays a role in how readers resolve the meaning of ironic utterances. High WMC was related to increased probability of initiating first-pass rereadings in ironic compared with literal sentences. The results of these two experiments suggest that the processing of (unconventional) irony does require extra processing effort and that the effects are localized in the ironic utterances.

Children's processing of emotion in ironic language

In the present study we addressed two novel questions: (1) is children's irony appreciation and processing related to their empathy skills? and (2) is children's processing of a speaker's ironic meaning best explained by a modular or interactive theory? Participants were thirty-one 8- and 9-year-olds children. We used a variant of the visual world paradigm to assess children's processing of ironic and literal evaluative remarks; in this paradigm children's cognition is revealed through their actions and eye gaze. Results in this paradigm showed that children's irony appreciation and processing were correlated with their empathy development, suggesting that empathy or emotional perspective taking may be important for development of irony comprehension. Further, children's processing of irony was consistent with an interactive framework, in which children consider ironic meanings in the earliest moments, as speech unfolds. These results provide important new insights about development of this complex aspect of emotion recognition.

Isn't It Ironic? An Electrophysiological Exploration of Figurative Language Processing

Although the neurocognitive processes underlying the comprehension of figurative language, especially metaphors and idioms, have been studied extensively, less is known about the processing of irony. In two experiments using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we examined the types of cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of ironic and literal sentences and their relative time course. The experiments varied in modality (auditory, visual), task demands (comprehension task vs. passive reading), and probability of stimulus occurrence. ERPs consistently revealed a large late positivity (i.e., P600 component) in the absence of an N400 component for irony compared to equivalent literal sentences independent of modality. This P600 was shown to be unaffected by the factors task demands and probability of occurrence. Taken together, the findings suggest that the observed P600 is related to irony processing, and might be a reflection of pragmatic interpretation processes. During the comprehension of irony, no semantic integration difficulty arises (absence of N400), but late inferential processes appear to be necessary for understanding ironic meanings (presence of P600). This finding calls for a revision of current models of figurative language processing.

Processing of Ironic Language in Children with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

We examined processing of verbal irony in three groups of children: (1) 18 children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD), (2) 18 typically- developing children, matched to the first group for verbal ability, and (3) 18 typically-developing children matched to the first group for chronological age. We utilized an irony comprehension task that minimized verbal and pragmatic demands for participants. Results showed that children with HFASD were as accurate as typicallydeveloping children in judging speaker intent for ironic criticisms, but group differences in judgment latencies, eye gaze, and humor evaluations suggested that children with HFASD applied a different processing strategy for irony comprehension; one that resulted in less accurate appreciation of the social functions of irony.

Comprehension of implicit meanings in social situations involving irony: A functional MRI study

To understand implicit social meanings, the interaction of literal meanings and relevant information in a situational context is important. However, previous studies have not investigated such contextual interactions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated cortical mechanisms underlying the processing of implicit meanings, particularly irony, in realistic social situations, focusing on contextual interactions. Healthy subjects were shown pictures depicting daily communicative situations during judgment tasks involving situational appropriateness and literal correctness. The left medial prefrontal cortex showed significantly greater activation during tasks involving situational judgments than during literal judgments. The right temporal pole was activated task-independently during irony-specific processing. The medial orbitofrontal cortex was activated task-dependently during irony processing in situational judgment tasks. These regions have been reported to be involved in theory of mind, and have not been implicated in previous studies on the linguistic processing of implicit meanings. This suggests that the intentional assessment of situational appropriateness for task execution is carried out in the left medial prefrontal cortex, whereas irony is processed in the right temporal pole by assessing situational context automatically, and is judged based on the situational context in the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Our results show that the processing of implicit meanings and irony in contextually rich situations depends on brain mechanisms involved in the "theory of mind," based on processing relevant information in a situational context, and suggest different functions in each region.

Children's Use of Trait Informationin Understanding Verbal Irony

We investigated whether providing information about a speaker's personality traits would influence children's interpretations and processing of verbal irony. In Experiment 1, 5- to 6-year-olds demonstrated strong understanding of personality traits and limited understanding of ironic remarks when the two were tested independently. In Experiment 2, 5- to 8-year-old children were provided with trait information about the speaker that was either congruent or incongruent with ironic remarks (e.g., nice speaker makes an ironic criticism, mean speaker makes an ironic criticism). Results showed that children's interpretations of ironic remarks were modulated by speaker personality traits and processing data revealed that older children were more efficient than younger children at coordinating cues to verbal irony.

How Sarcastic are You?

In the present research, the authors examined the effects of self-perceived use of sarcasm on the production, interpretation, and processing of verbal irony. Accordingly, they first devised and evaluated a sarcasm self-report scale (SSS). In Experiment 1, results showed that participants’ self-perceived use of sarcastic irony (as assessed by the SSS) predicted their use of ironic statements in a production task and was related to their interpretation of ironic criticisms and ironic compliments. In Experiment 2, results showed that participants’ perceived use of irony was related to their processing of ironic statements: SSS scores were related to relative processing speeds for literal and ironic statements. The results of these experiments indicate that there are individual differences in purported use of sarcasm that influence interpretation and processing of verbal irony.