Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T03:18:06.698Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Using shared knowledge to determine ironic intent; a conversational response paradigm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2020

Maria ZAJĄCZKOWSKA Open the ORCID record for Maria ZAJĄCZKOWSKA [Opens in a new window] ,
Kirsten ABBOT-SMITH Open the ORCID record for Kirsten ABBOT-SMITH [Opens in a new window]  and
Christina S. KIM Open the ORCID record for Christina S. KIM [Opens in a new window]
Maria ZAJĄCZKOWSKA
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of Kent, UK
Kirsten ABBOT-SMITH*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of Kent, UK
Christina S. KIM
Affiliation:
Department of English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages, University of KentUK
*
*Corresponding author: Kent Child Development Unit, School of Psychology, University of Kent, Keynes College Canterbury CT2 7NP, UK E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mentalising has long been suggested to play an important role in irony interpretation. We hypothesised that another important cognitive underpinning of irony interpretation is likely to be children's capacity for mental set switching – the ability to switch flexibly between different approaches to the same task. We experimentally manipulated mentalising and set switching to investigate their effects on the ability of 7-year-olds to determine if an utterance is intended ironically or literally. The component of mentalising examined was whether the speaker and listener shared requisite knowledge.

We developed a paradigm in which children had to select how a listener might reply, depending on whether the listener shared knowledge needed to interpret the utterance as ironic. Our manipulation of requisite set switching found null results. However, we are the first to show experimentally that children as young as seven years use mentalising to determine whether an utterance is intended ironically or literally.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2020 , pp. 1170 - 1188
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adachi, T., Koeda, T., Hirabayashi, S., Maeoka, Y., Shiota, M., Wright, E., & Wada, A. (2004). The metaphor and sarcasm scenario test: a new instrument to help differentiate high functioning pervasive developmental disorder from attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder. Brain and Development, 26 : 301–306. doi:10.1016/S0387-7604(03)00170-0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aijmer, K. (2019). ‘Ooh whoops I'm sorry! Teenagers’ use of English apology expressions. Journal of Pragmatics, 142: 258–269. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2018.10.017CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Airenti, G. (2017). Pragmatic Development. In Cummings, L. (Ed.), Research in Clinical Pragmatics (pp. 3–28). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47489-2_1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banasik-Jemielniak, N. (2019). Children's exposure to irony in the first four years of their life: what we learn about the use of ironic comments by mothers from the analysis of the Providence corpus of CHILDES. Psychology of Language and Communication. 23(1): 1–13. DOI: 10.2478/plc-2019-0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banasik-Jemielniak, N., & Bokus, B. (2019). Children's comprehension of irony: studies of Polish-speaking preschoolers. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 48: 1217–1240.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Banasik, N. (2013). Non-literal speech comprehension in preschool children – an example from a study on verbal irony. Psychology of Language and Communication, 17(3), 309–324. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.2478/plc-2013-0020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, D., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 225–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barzy, M., Filik, R., Williams, D., & Ferguson, H. J. (2020). Emotional Processing of Ironic Versus Literal Criticism in Autistic and Nonautistic Adults: Evidence From Eye-Tracking. Autism Research. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2272CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boiteau, T. W., Malone, P. S., Peters, S. A., & Almor, A. (2014). Interference between conversation and a concurrent visuomotor task. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 143(1), 295–311. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031858Google Scholar
Bucciarelli, M., Colle, L., & Bara, B. (2003). How children comprehend speech acts and communicative gestures. Journal of Pragmatics, 35: 207–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnett, D. (2015). Exploring the role of conventionality in children's interpretations of ironic remarks. Journal of Child Language, 42: 1267–1288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caillies, S., Bertot, V., Motte, J., Raynaud, C., & Abely, M. (2014). Social cognition in ADHD: Irony understanding and recursive theory of mind. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35(11), 3191–3198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.08.002CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Neys, W., & Schaeken, W. (2007). When People Are More Logical Under Cognitive Load. Experimental Psychology, 54(2), 128–133. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169.54.2.128CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dews, S., Kaplan, J., & Winner, E. (1995). Why not say it directly? The social functions of irony. Discourse Processes, 19: 347–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive Functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 135–168. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dieussaert, K., Verkerk, S., Gillard, E., & Schaeken, W. (2011). Some effort for some: Further evidence that scalar implicatures are effortful. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(12), 2352–2367. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2011.588799CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dynel, M. (2019). Ironic intentions in action and interaction. Language Sciences, 75: 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliot, C. D., & Smith, P. (2011). British Ability Scales Third Edition (BAS 3). London: GL Assessment.Google Scholar
Filippova, E. (2014). Irony production and comprehension. In Matthews, D. (Ed.), Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition (pp. 261–278). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.15filCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Filippova, E., & Astington, J. W. (2008). Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development, 79(1), 126–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01115.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibbs, R. (1983). Do people always access the literal meanings of indirect requests? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, Cognition, 8, 524–533.Google Scholar
Glenwright, M., & Agbayewa, A. S. (2012). Older children and adolescents with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders can comprehend verbal irony in computer-mediated communication. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6(2), 628–638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2011.09.013CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Happé, F. (1994). An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of story characters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped, and normal children and adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 129–154. doi:10.1007/BF02172093CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harris, P. L. (1992). From Simulation to Folk Psychology: The Case for Development. Mind & Language, 7(1-2), 120–144. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1992.tb00201.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, C. R., Simonoff, E., Baird, G., Pickles, A., Marsden, A. J., Tregay, J., Happé, F., & Charman, T. (2018). The association between theory of mind, executive function, and the symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 11(1), 95–109. doi:10.1002/aur.1873CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Katz, A.N., & Pexman, P.M. (1997). Interpreting figurative statements: speaker occupation can change metaphor to irony. Metaphor and Symbol, 12(1): 19–41. DOI: 10.1207/s15327868ms1201_3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kloo, D., & Perner, J. (2003). Training transfer between card sorting and false belief understanding: Helping children apply conflicting descriptions. Child development, 74(6), 1823–1839. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-8624.2003.00640.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kowatch, K., Whalen, J. M., & Pexman, P. M. (2013). Irony Comprehension in Action: A New Test of Processing for Verbal Irony. Discourse Processes, 50(5), 301–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2013.799934CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massaro, D., Valle, A., & Marchetti, A. (2014). Do social norms, false belief understanding and metacognitive vocabulary influence irony comprehension? A study of five- and seven-year-old children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 11(3): 292–304. DOI: 10.1080/17405629.2013.821407CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D., Biney, H., & Abbot-Smith, K. (2018). Individual Differences in Children’s Pragmatic Ability: A Review of Associations with Formal Language, Social Cognition, and Executive Functions. Language Learning and Development, 14(3), 186–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2018.1455584CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milligan, K., Astington, J. W., & Dack, L. A. (2007). Language and theory of mind: meta- analysis of the relation between language ability and false-belief understanding. Child development, 78(2), 622–646. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01018.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moll, H., & Kadipasaoglu, D. (2013). The primacy of social over visual perspective-taking. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00558CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nieuwland, M. S., Ditman, T., & Kuperberg, G. R. (2010). On the incrementality of pragmatic processing: An ERP investigation of informativeness and pragmatic abilities. Journal of Memory and Language, 63(3), 324–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2010.06.005CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nilsen, E. S., Glenwright, M., & Huyder, V. (2011). Children and adults understand that verbal irony interpretation depends on listener knowledge. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12(3), 374–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2010.544693CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pillow, B. H. (1989). Early understanding of perception as a source of knowledge. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 47(1), 116–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(89)90066-0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
R Core Team. (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from https://www.r-project.org/.Google Scholar
Recchia, H. E., Howe, N., Ross, H. S., & Alexander, S. (2010). Children’s understanding and production of verbal irony in family conversations. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 28, 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1348/026151008X401903CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Semel, E., Wiig, E., & Secord, W. A. (2013). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (5th ed.). San Antonio: TX: Pearson.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2018). How children come to understand false beliefs: A shared intentionality account. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(34), 8491–8498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wellman, H. M., & Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of theory-of-mind tasks. Child Development, 75(2), 523–541.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whalen, J. M., & Pexman, P. M. (2010). How do children respond to verbal irony in face-to-face communication? The development of mode adoption across middle childhood. Discourse Processes, 47(5), 363–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638530903347635CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whalen, J.M., Doyle, A., & Pexman, P. (2019). Sarcasm between siblings: children's use of relationship information in processing ironic remarks. Journal of Pragmatics.Google Scholar
Xiang, M., Grove, J., & Giannakidou, A. (2013). Dependency-dependent interference: NPI interference, agreement attraction, and global pragmatic inferences. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 708. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00708CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zajączkowska, M., & Abbot-Smith, K. (2019). Cognitive flexibility helps children understand ironic intent. Child Language Symposium, University of Sheffield, 11th-12th July, 2019.Google Scholar