Children and Adults Understand That Verbal Irony Interpretation Depends on Listener Knowledge

Abstract

Incongruity between a positive statement and a negative context is a cue to verbal irony. Two studies examined whether school-age children and adults recognized that listeners require knowledge of context to detect irony. Specifically, the studies investigated whether participants could inhibit their own context knowledge to appropriately gauge listener interpretation of ironic intent when the listener lacked context knowledge. Adults and older children (8- to 10-year-olds), but not younger children (6- to 7-year-olds), demonstrated this recognition; their responses indicated that listeners would be less likely to interpret statements as ironic when the listeners were ignorant to an incongruent context compared with when they were knowledgeable. Second-order theory-of-mind reasoning was related to the older children's ability to shift their responses regarding listener inferences of ironic statements based on the listeners' knowledge of context.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant awarded to Elizabeth S. Nilsen and an SSHRC University of Manitoba Bridge Funding award to Melanie Glenwright.

We thank the students, teachers, and principals at the Waterloo Region Catholic Schools who participated in the study. We also thank Kristi Baerg, Samantha Daniel, and Cressida Pacia for their assistance, and Nathania van Kuik Fast and Amy de Jaeger for creating the study stimuli.

Notes

¹We asked a fifth question to determine whether children were attending to the listener's knowledge state at the beginning of the story. However, because this question was asked after the story concluded, as well as after all the other questions were asked, it was unclear whether children's responses were biased by the story ending and/or the previous questioning. As such, results from this question were omitted from analysis.

Notes. Listener's interpretation of speaker intent and speaker humor for literal criticisms should be appraised more accurately than ironic criticisms.

*Listener accuracy for literal criticisms should not be modulated by listener knowledge.

**Listener accuracy for ironic criticisms should be modulated by listener knowledge, such that accuracy should decrease for the listener's interpretations and belief when the listener is ignorant.

Ns = 53 (children) and 48 (adults).

N = 53. Partial correlations controlling for age, verbal skills, and gender are shown in parentheses.

*p < .05.

N = 32.