Individual differences in emoji comprehension: Gender, age, and culture.

Emoji are an important substitute for non-verbal cues (such as facial expressions) in online written communication. So far, however, little is known about individual differences regarding how they are perceived. In the current study, we examined the influence of gender, age, and culture on emoji comprehension.

Examining the role of context in written sarcasm comprehension: Evidence from eye-tracking during reading.

This article addresses a current theoretical debate between modular and interactive accounts of sarcasm processing, by investigating the role of context (specifically, knowing that a character has been sarcastic before) in the comprehension of a sarcastic remark. An eye-tracking experiment was conducted in which participants were asked to read texts that introduced a character as being either sarcastic or not and ended in either a literal or an unfamiliar sarcastic remark. The results indicated that when the character was previously literal, a subsequent sarcastic remark was more difficult to process than its literal counterpart.

The role of emoticons in sarcasm comprehension in younger and older adults: Evidence from an eye-tracking experiment.

We present an eye-tracking experiment examining moment-to-moment processes underlying the comprehension of emoticons. Younger (18-30) and older (65+) participants had their eye movements recorded while reading scenarios containing comments that were ambiguous between literal or sarcastic interpretations (e.g.