What Are You Really Saying? Associations between Shyness and Verbal Irony Comprehension

Verbal irony exploits the ambiguity inherent in language by using the discrepancy between a speaker's intended meaning and the literal meaning of his or her words to achieve social goals. Irony provides a window into children's developing pragmatic competence. Yet, little research exists on individual differences that may disrupt this understanding. For example, verbal irony may challenge shy children, who tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as being threatening and who have difficulty mentalizing in social contexts. We examined whether shyness is related to the interpretation of ironic statements. Ninety‐nine children (8–12 year olds) listened to stories wherein one character made either a literal or ironic criticism or a literal or ironic compliment. Children appraised the speaker's belief and communicative intention. Shyness was assessed using self‐report measures of social anxiety symptoms and shy negative affect. Shyness was not related to children's comprehension of the counterfactual nature of ironic statements. However, shyness was related to children's ratings of speaker meanness for ironic statements. Thus, although not related to the understanding that speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shyness was related to children's construal of the social meaning of irony. Such subtle differences in language interpretation may underlie some of the social difficulties facing shy children. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's Comprehension of Critical and Complimentary Forms of Verbal Irony

The existing research on children's comprehension of verbal irony has focused exclusively on children's understanding of ironic criticisms. Two experiments examined 5- and 6-year-old children's ability to detect the nonliteral nature and intended meaning of both ironic criticism and ironic praise as depicted in short, videotaped stories. Considered together, the results from these experiments permit several conclusions: First, the data confirm earlier research suggesting that children's detection of nonliteral utterances and their interpretation of the speaker's pragmatic intent are separable components of early irony comprehension. Second, children's ability to detect ironic statements is asymmetrical across critical and complimentary forms of irony. Finally, although children more readily detect ironic criticisms, explicit echoic cues play an important role in facilitating uniquely their detection of ironic compliments. We discuss these results in the context of social pragmatic theories of early communicative development (e.g., Bruner, 1983; Tomasello, 1992, 1995) and with reference to a recent allusional-pretense model of irony comprehension proposed for mature speakers (Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg, & Brown, 1995).     

The on-line processing of written irony

We report an eye-tracking study in which we investigate the on-line processing of written irony. Specifically, participants’ eye movements were recorded while they read sentences which were either intended ironically, or non-ironically, and subsequent text which contained pronominal reference to the ironic (or non-ironic) phrase. Results showed longer reading times for ironic comments compared to a non-ironic baseline, suggesting that additional processing was required in ironic compared to non-ironic conditions. Reading times for subsequent pronominal reference indicated that for ironic materials, both the ironic and literal interpretations of the text were equally accessible during on-line language comprehension. This finding is most in-line with predictions of the graded salience hypothesis, which, in conjunction with the retention hypothesis, states that readers represent both the literal and ironic interpretation of an ironic utterance.     

Form and function in children's understanding of ironic utterances

Children's use of contextual discrepancy and stressed intonation to interpret literal form and illocutionary function in the use of ironic utterances was examined in two experiments. First and third grade children (6 and 8 years of age, respectively) and college adults were read short stories consisting of an utterance by a speaker and contextual information that was either neutral or that biased an ironic or literal interpretation of the utterance. The intonation of the utterance was either stressed or unstressed. Questions were asked about the literal form of the utterance, and the speaker's attitude in using the utterance. The results suggest that evaluation of the literal form and inference to the speaker's intended use of an utterance are independent components of irony comprehension in children: that contextual discrepancy and intonation function differently in cueing these processes; and that children and adults differ both in accomplishing these processes and in the use of these cues.     

语调在6~10岁儿童对不同类型反语认知中的作用

以态度、话语含义和语言现象探测为测量指标,探讨语调对6~10岁儿童不同类型反语认知的影响。结果表明：（1）6~10岁是儿童反语认知能力迅速提高的时期,这不仅表现在儿童对说话人态度和话语含义的理解上,还表现在儿童对反语现象的解释上。但是儿童在反语认知的不同方面表现出发展的不平衡性,6岁儿童已能初步理解反语中说话人的态度和话语的含义,但还不能正确解释反语现象;直至10岁,儿童解释反语现象的能力仍在发展之中。（2）语调（中性语调和强调语调）影响儿童对他人态度和话语含义的理解,在强调语调下,儿童能更好地理解说话人的态度和话语的含义;但语调不影响儿童对语言现象的解释。（3）儿童对不同类型反语（反语批评和反语恭维）认知水平不同,6岁儿童对两类反语的态度判断、话语含义判断和语言现象解释均不存在显著差异;8岁和10岁儿童对两类反语的态度判断和话语含义判断也不存在显著差异,但在语言现象解释上存在显著差异。与反语恭维相比,8岁和10岁儿童能更好地解释反语批评     

Children's understanding and production of verbal irony in family conversations

This study examined how children use and understand various forms of irony (sarcasm, hyperbole, understatement, and rhetorical questions) in the context of naturalistic positive and negative family conversations in the home. Instances of ironic language in conversations between mothers, fathers, and their two children (M_ages=6.33 and 4.39 years) were recorded during six 90‐min observations for each of 39 families. Children's responses to others' ironic utterances were coded for their understanding of meaning and conversational function. Mothers were especially likely to ask rhetorical questions and to use ironic language in conflictual contexts. In contrast, fathers used hyperbole and understatement as frequently as rhetorical questions, and employed ironic language in both positive and conflictual contexts. Children also showed evidence of a nascent ability to use ironic language, especially hyperbole and rhetorical questions. Family members used rhetorical questions and understatement proportionately more often in a negative interaction context. Finally, older siblings understood irony better than younger siblings, and both children's responses revealed some understanding of ironic language, particularly sarcasm and rhetorical questions. Overall, the results suggest that family conversations in the home may be one important context for the development of children's use and understanding of ironic language.     

Verbal irony processing: How do contrast and humour correlate?

Verbal irony relies on contrast, that is, incongruity between the situational context and the ironic assertion. But is the degree of contrast related to the perceived humorousness of ironic comments? We answered this question by conducting two experiments. In the first experiment, participants were asked to read a list of sentence pairs (ironic or control) and judge the extent to which the meaning of the first sentence contrasted with that of the second. In the second experiment, participants were invited to rate the humorousness of ironic comments compared with their literal counterparts. Results showed that ironic remarks were rated as more contrasting and more humorous than their literal counterparts, but that humour only emerged from a moderate contrast.     

Do social norms,false belief understanding,and metacognitive vocabulary influence irony comprehension? A study of five- and seven-year-old children

This study explores the effects of violating socially shared versus situationally defined norms on the understanding of ironic statements in 70 Italian-speaking five- and seven-year-old children. We also considered the possible relationships between irony understanding, receptive and metacognitive vocabulary, and false belief understanding. The results showed that violating socially shared norms does not benefit younger children's understanding of irony, although it does help older children's understanding. Ironic utterances that violate situationally defined norms were understood similarly across the two age groups. First- and second-order false belief understanding did not predict children's ability to interpret irony, although metacognitive vocabulary did predict interpretation for the seven-year-old group in instances of violating a situationally defined norm.     

It's Fascinating Research: The Cognition of Verbal Irony

ABSTRACT— Verbal irony is nonliteral language that makes salient a discrepancy between expectations and reality. For researchers who study verbal irony, a critical question is: How do we grasp the meaning of ironic language? The parallel-constraint-satisfaction approach holds promise as an answer to this question. By this account, multiple cues to ironic intent, such as tone of voice, incongruity, and knowledge of the speaker, are processed rapidly and in parallel and this information is coordinated with the utterance itself in order to construct a coherent interpretation that is the best fit for the activated information. Recently, research with individuals who struggle with irony comprehension (typically developing children, individuals with autism-spectrum disorder, individuals with brain injury) has provided new clues about the complex process by which ironic meaning is inferred.     

Young Bilingual Children's Heightened Sensitivity to Referential Cues

Children growing up in a dual-language environment have to constantly monitor the dynamic communicative context to determine what the speaker is trying to say and how to respond appropriately. Such self-generated efforts to monitor speakers' communicative needs may heighten children's sensitivity to, and allow them to make better use of, referential gestures to figure out a speaker's referential intent. In a series of studies, we explored monolingual and bilingual preschoolers' use of nonverbal referential gestures such as pointing and gaze direction to figure out a speaker's intent to refer. In Study 1, we found that 3- and 4-year-old bilingual children were better able than monolingual children to use referential gestures (e.g., gaze direction) to locate a hidden toy in the face of conflicting body-distal information (the experimenter was seated behind an empty box while the cue was directed at the correct box). Study 2 found that by 5 years of age, monolingual children had mastered this task. Study 3 established that the bilingual advantage can be found in children as young as 2 years old. Thus, the experience of growing up in a bilingual environment fosters the development of the understanding of referential intent.     

What leads to coordinated attention in parent–toddler interactions? Children's hearing status matters

Coordinated attention between children and their parents plays an important role in their social, language, and cognitive development. The current study used head‐mounted eye‐trackers to investigate the effects of children's prelingual hearing loss on how they achieve coordinated attention with their hearing parents during free‐flowing object play. We found that toddlers with hearing loss (age: 24–37 months) had similar overall gaze patterns (e.g., gaze length and proportion of face looking) as their normal‐hearing peers. In addition, children's hearing status did not affect how likely parents and children attended to the same object at the same time during play. However, when following parents' attention, children with hearing loss used both parents' gaze directions and hand actions as cues, whereas children with normal hearing mainly relied on parents' hand actions. The diversity of pathways leading to coordinated attention suggests the flexibility and robustness of developing systems in using multiple pathways to achieve the same functional end.     

The influence of familiarity on explicit eye gaze judgement in preschoolers

The current study explores the influence of familiarity on explicit eye gaze judgement in preschoolers. We introduce reaction times for touches as a new measure for children studies. Children aged four–six years saw either their caregiver's face or a stranger's face looking at an object or away from it. Children were asked to touch the face that was looking at the object and reaction times to correct touches were measured. Children reacted faster to strangers' faces than to their caregivers' faces. This may indicate that preschoolers used the face of a stranger more effectively as a source of information about the environment and for this reason detected the eye gaze-object relationship faster. In addition, children's reactions were faster in a nonsocial shape-matching task than in the social eye gaze-judgement task. The applied paradigm is appropriate to further investigate the development and influencing factors of explicit eye gaze judgements in preschoolers.     

他人期望类型对6~10岁儿童不同类型反语认知的影响

以态度、话语含义和语言现象探测为指标,探讨他人期望类型对6~10岁儿童不同类型反语认知的影响。结果表明：⑴他人期望类型（内隐和外显）影响儿童对他人态度和话语含义的探测,但不影响语言现象探测;⑵儿童在反语认知不同方面表现出发展的不平衡性。6岁儿童已具备初步的反语认知能力,开始能够理解反语中说话者的态度和话语含义,但还不能正确解释反语现象。直至10岁,儿童对反语现象的解释能力仍在发展中。⑶儿童对不同类型反语认知水平不同。6岁儿童对两类反语的解释不存在显著差异,8岁和10岁儿童对两类反语解释均存在显著差异。与反语恭维比,8岁和10岁儿童能更好地解释反语批评。     

Lexical processing in children and adults during word copying

Copying text may seem trivial, but the task itself is psychologically complex. It involves a series of sequential visual and cognitive processes, which must be co-ordinated; these include visual encoding, mental representation and written production. To investigate the time course of word processing during copying, we recorded eye movements of adults and children as they hand-copied isolated words presented on a classroom board. Longer and lower frequency words extended adults' encoding durations, suggesting whole word encoding. Only children's short word encoding was extended by lower frequency. Though children spent more time encoding long words compared to short words, gaze durations for long words were extended similarly for high- and low-frequency words. This suggested that for long words children used partial word representations and encoded multiple sublexical units rather than single whole words. Piecemeal word representation underpinned copying longer words in children, but reliance on partial word representations was not shown in adult readers.     

What the eyes already ‘know’: using eye movement measurement to tap into children's implicit numerical magnitude representations

To date, a number of studies have demonstrated the existence of mismatches between children's implicit and explicit knowledge at certain points in development that become manifest by their gestures and gaze orientation in different problem solving contexts. Stimulated by this research, we used eye movement measurement to investigate the development of basic knowledge about numerical magnitude in primary school children. Sixty‐six children from grades one to three (i.e. 6–9 years) were presented with two parallel versions of a number line estimation task of which one was restricted to behavioural measures, whereas the other included the recording of eye movement data. The results of the eye movement experiment indicate a quantitative increase as well as a qualitative change in children's implicit knowledge about numerical magnitudes in this age group that precedes the overt, that is, behavioural, demonstration of explicit numerical knowledge. The finding that children's eye movements reveal substantially more about the presence of implicit precursors of later explicit knowledge in the numerical domain than classical approaches suggests further exploration of eye movement measurement as a potential early assessment tool of individual achievement levels in numerical processing. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Irony and second-order false belief in children: What changes when mothers rather than siblings speak?

This study explored irony understanding in school-age children, when the irony is used in two different family relations: between a child and the child's mother and between a child and a sibling. Two irony task typologies were used to assess 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds' understanding of the intended and expressed meanings (Study 1: N = 77; Study 2: N = 30). Results proved that the relationship with the mother, more than the relationship with a sibling, supported children's irony understanding. A predictive effect of second-order false-belief understanding on irony comprehension was also found. The findings support the hypothesis that the irony understanding, at least in the acquisition phase, depends on the relational contexts in which it is used. The predictive effect of second-order recursive thinking confirms and extends the role of theory of mind in the management of ironic communication.     

The role of eye‐gaze in understanding other minds

From an early age, infants are sensitive to eye‐gaze direction. This study examined Baron‐Cohen's (1994, 1995) claim that the ability to use eye‐gaze plays a crucial role in the child's developing understanding of other minds. Children aged 3 and 4 years participated in a face‐reading task, which assessed their capacity to infer mental states from a character's direction of eye‐gaze, and in a false‐belief task. As predicted, no child passed the false‐belief task without prior success on the face‐reading task. However, contrary to a central claim within Baron‐Cohen's model of mind‐reading, presentation of an eye‐gaze cue in the false‐belief task did not enhance children's performance. Furthermore, children did not solely rely on eye‐gaze as a cue, but used another directional cue (an arrow) in inferring a character's desire and intention. These results question the special role of eye‐gaze in the child's developing ability to mind‐read.     

Demystifying infant vocal imitation: The roles of mouth looking and speaker’s gaze

Vocal imitation plays a fundamental role in human language acquisition from infancy. Little is known, however, about how infants imitate other's sounds. We focused on three factors: (a) whether infants receive information from upright faces, (b) the infant's observation of the speaker's mouth and (c) the speaker directing their gaze towards the infant. We recorded the eye movements of 6‐month‐olds who participated in experiments watching videos of a speaker producing vowel sounds. We found that an infants’ tendency to vocally imitate such videos increased as a function of (a) seeing upright rather than inverted faces, (b) their increased looking towards the speaker's mouth and (c) whether the speaker directed their gaze towards, rather than away from infants. These latter findings are consistent with theories of motor resonance and natural pedagogy respectively. New light has been shed on the cues and underlying mechanisms linking infant speech perception and production.     

Understanding of literal truth, ironic criticism, and deceptive praise following childhood head injury.

Children with closed head injury (CHI) have semantic-pragmatic language problems that include difficulty in understanding and producing both literal and nonliteral statements. For example, they are relatively insensitive to some of the social messages in nonstandard communication as well as to words that code distinctions among mental states. This suggests that they may have difficulty with comprehension tasks involving first- and second-order intentionality, such as those involved in understanding irony and deception. We studied how 6- to 15-year-old children, typically developing or with CHI, interpret scenarios involving literal truth, ironic criticism, and deceptive praise. Children with severe CHI had overall poorer mastery of the task. Even mild CHI impaired the ability to understand the intentionality underlying deceptive praise. CHI, especially biologically significant CHI, appears to place children at risk for failure to understand language as externalized thought.     

The role of gaze direction and mutual exclusivity in guiding 24‐month‐olds' word mappings

In these studies, we examined how a default assumption about word meaning, the mutual exclusivity assumption and an intentional cue, gaze direction, interacted to guide 24‐month‐olds' object‐word mappings. In Expt 1, when the experimenter's gaze was consistent with the mutual exclusivity assumption, novel word mappings were facilitated. When the experimenter's eye‐gaze was in conflict with the mutual exclusivity cue, children demonstrated a tendency to rely on the mutual exclusivity assumption rather than follow the experimenter's gaze to map the label to the object. In Expt 2, children relied on the experimenter's gaze direction to successfully map both a first label to a novel object and a second label to a familiar object. Moreover, infants mapped second labels to familiar objects to the same degree that they mapped first labels to novel objects. These findings are discussed with regard to children's use of convergent and divergent cues in indirect word mapping contexts.