Irony is one of the linguistic means in which intended and expressed meaning diverge. It serves social-communicative functions, requires the understanding of the speaker's mental state and its comprehension takes place at an advanced stage of language acquisition. In the present study, we investigated 8-year old's irony comprehension and social skills and asked their parents about their preferred use of irony towards their children. We then compared children with the highest scores in irony comprehension test with those with lower scores. The full sample included 46 families from Poland. Results show positive associations between children's levels of irony comprehension and levels of mothers irony use. No such relations were found for fathers. No differences were found in ToM scores between proficient and non-proficient irony comprehenders. Our findings provide a base for future studies to study the use of irony in child-parent talk in more diverse culturally and linguistically diverse populations.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7034895 | PMC |
| http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228538 | PLOS |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
An Eye Tracker Study on the Understanding of Implicitness in French Elementary School Children.
Brain Sci
November 2024
ISJPS UMR 8103 CNRS, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, 75005 Paris, France.
Background: The aim of this study is to use an eye tracker to compare the understanding of three forms of implicitness (i.e., presupposition, conversational implicatures, and irony) in 139 pupils from the first to the fifth year of elementary school.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHow Does Understanding of Social Situations and Other's Intention Contribute to Idiom and Irony Comprehension in Autism Spectrum Disorder?
Brain Sci
October 2024
The Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel.
Figurative language is a central tool for enriching spoken and written languages, and it is important for building social relationships. Difficulties in figurative language understanding may impair social adjustment. Some studies have found more gaps in the understanding of irony and idioms among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to those of their peers with typical development (TD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProsodic and Visual Cues Facilitate Irony Comprehension by Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants.
J Speech Lang Hear Res
July 2024
School of Foreign Studies, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, China.
Purpose: This study investigated irony comprehension by Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants, focusing on how prosodic and visual cues contribute to their comprehension, and whether second-order Theory of Mind is required for using these cues.
Method: We tested 52 Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (aged 3-7 years) and 52 age- and gender-matched children with normal hearing. All children completed a Theory of Mind test and a story comprehension test.
Testing theory of mind in large language models and humans.
Nat Hum Behav
July 2024
Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
At the core of what defines us as humans is the concept of theory of mind: the ability to track other people's mental states. The recent development of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has led to intense debate about the possibility that these models exhibit behaviour that is indistinguishable from human behaviour in theory of mind tasks. Here we compare human and LLM performance on a comprehensive battery of measurements that aim to measure different theory of mind abilities, from understanding false beliefs to interpreting indirect requests and recognizing irony and faux pas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that can significantly impact a child's daily life and academic performance. Some studies have noted challenges in social cognition among children with ADHD, specifically in aspects like emotion perception and processing, empathy, Theory of Mind, and pragmatics. One of the lesser-explored aspects of ADHD is its potential impact on higher-level language skills, such as irony understanding.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!