VERBAL IRONY COMPREHENSION

Understanding verbal irony is a complex cognitive process that involves the recognition of…

1 The speaker’s belief to understand that the speaker does not believe what he/she has said

2 The speaker’s intent to understand the attitude and emotion of the speaker and the impact he/she intend the statement to have

INTRODUCTION

Head: NOD – Mouth: SMILE

Ackerman, B. P. (1982). Contextual integration and utterance interpretation: The ability of children and adults to interpret sarcastic utterances. Child Development, 53: 1075–1083. Climie, E., Pexman, P. (2008). Eye gaze provides a windowNicholson A, Whalen JM and Pexman PM (2013) Children's processing of emotion in ironic language. Front. Psychol. 4:691. on children's understanding of verbal irony. Journal of Cognition and Development, 9, 257-285. Dews, S., Winner, E., Kaplan, J., Rosenblatt, E., Hunt, M., Lim, K., McGovern, A., Qualter, A., & Smarsh, B. (1996). Children’s understanding of the meaning and functions of verbal irony. Child Development, 67: 3071–3085. de Groot, A., Kaplan, J., Rosenblatt, E., Dews, S., & Winner, E. (1995) “Understanding versus discriminating nonliteral utterances: evidence for a disassociation.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10(4): 255-273. Harris, M., & Pexman, P. M. (2003). Children’s perceptions of the social functions of verbal irony. Discourse Processes, 36: 147–165. Keenan, T. & Quigley, K. (1999) “Do young children use echoic information in their comprehension of sarcastic speech? A test of echoic mention theory.” British Journal of Dev Psychology, 17: 83-96. Nakassis, C., & Snedeker, J. (2002). Beyond sarcasm: Intonation and context as relational cues in children’s recognition of irony. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughs, H. Littlefield, & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development. (pp. 429–440). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Nicholson A, Whalen JM and Pexman PM (2013) Children's processing of emotion in ironic language. Front. Psychol. 4:691. Pons, F., Harris, P. L., and de Rosnay,M. (2004). Emotion comprehension between 3 and 11 years:developmental periods and hierarchical organization. Eur. J. Dev. Psychol. 1, 127–152.Winner, E. Windmueller, G., Rosenblatt, E., Bosco, L., Best, E., & Gardner, H. (1987)“Making Sense of Literal and Nonliteral Falsehood.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 2(1): 13-32.

1Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2ICREASantiago González-Fuente1, Pilar Prieto2,1

Do prosody and gestures facilitate children verbal irony processing and understanding?

santiago.gonzalez@upf.edu, pilar.prieto@upf.edu

Head: TILT – Mouth: STRETCH

Refe

renc

es

IS HE/SHE LYING?

IS HE/SHE BEING MEAN OR NICE?IS HE/SHE BEING FUNNY OR

SERIOUS?

DEVELOPMENT STUDIES ON VERBAL IRONY COMPREHENSION

Recognizing speaker's belief to be different to the literal meaning of an ironic remark is achieved at early age stages 4-5 years old

Appreciation of the speaker’s intent requires the assessment and integration of multiple cognitive and emotional information that entails a more sophisticated inference process that becomes more accurate as children grow up (e.g. Ackerman 1982, 1983; Dews et al. 1996; Nakassis & Snedeker 2002; Harris & Pexman 2003; Climie & Pexman 2008, Nicholson et al. 2013).

Recognizing the speaker intent to be more or less aggressive in a

sarcastic utterance 7-8 years old

Recognizing the speaker intent to be funny >10 years old

EMOTIONAL PROSODY AND GESTURES ON VERBAL IRONY COMPREHENSIONThere is evidence that children’s irony appreciation is correlated with their understanding of emotional expressions conveyed by prosody and gestures (Pons et al. 2004, Nicholson et al. 2013).

PROSODY• Children rely on prosodic cues to detect the

speaker's ironic intent (e.g., Ackerman 1982, 1983; Dews et al. 1996; Nakassis & Snedeker 2002)

• Intonation facilitate six year olds’ irony comprehension (e.g. De Groot et al. 1995; Keenan and Quigley 1999)

• No-facilitation effects of intonation in the ironic comprehension of even eight and ten year olds (Winner et al. 1987)

GESTURES• Few experiments that used scenarios

which present short puppet shows with no control of the gestural cues involved in the production of ironic or literal sentences

No development studies have been conducted focusing on the specific contribution of prosody and gestures to the processing and understanding of different communicative functions of verbal irony.

RESEARCH GAP

OUR HYPOTHESIS IS THAT GESTURAL AND PROSODIC CUES WILL BE ACTIVELY USED BY CHILDREN TO EARLY DETECT BOTH THE INTENTION AND BELIEF BEHIND IRONIC REMARKS.

METHODS

• TASK Visual world paradigm experiment reported in Climie & Pexman (2008)

• PARTICIPANTS 20 5-years; 20 8-years; and 20 adults

• PROCEDURE Participants were videotaped while they were sitting on a table and faced with a screen in which appeared a short story involving two characters that ended with a statement uttered by one of the characters.

TARGET SENTENCE CONDITIONS

• (1) in a sincere way

• (2) in an ironic way with 'emotionless' prosody and gestures (e.g. 'blank' face)

• (3) in an ironic way conveying a negative-emotion through prosody and gestures (e.g. mouth stretching and head tilting)

• (4) in an ironic way conveying a positive-emotion through prosody and gestures (e.g. smiling and nodding)

‘blank’ face

MEASUREMENTS

Off-line• (a) the speaker’s belief• (b) the speaker’s intent

to be mean or nice (using response objects).

• (c) the speaker’s intent to be funny or serious.

On-line• processing of speaker

intent (the time taken to judge the speaker’s intent to be mean or nice and also looking behavior for the response objects considered in that judgment)