Children's Comprehension of Irony: Studies on Polish-Speaking Preschoolers

Abstract

We explored the topic of irony comprehension by preschoolers. Two hundred and thirty-one children (77 four-year-olds, 89 five-year-olds, and 65 six-year-olds) were tested with the Irony Comprehension Task (ICT, Banasik and Bokus, in: Poster presented at the psycholinguistics conference in Flanders, Berg en Dal, 2012). Participants were asked questions checking comprehension of the intended meaning behind an ironic comment. Four conditions were used for the ironic utterances: targeted (ironic comment was a reference to the addressee's behavior), non-targeted (ironic comment was not a reference to the addressee's behavior), with symmetric dyads (a child said the ironic comment to another child), and asymmetric dyads (an adult said the ironic comment to a child). All groups achieved high irony comprehension scores. The results show a significant difference in accuracy between the 4-year-olds and the 6-year-olds only. The youngest group more accurately understood ironic utterances that referred to the addressee's action than those that did not, while older children did not show these differences. The aspect of who is speaking to whom was also significant only for the youngest children. These results provide important new insights into factors potentially influencing figurative language comprehension. Components such as participant structure and irony type require acknowledgement in the discussion on irony difficulty.

Keywords: Development of irony comprehension; Figurative language; Non-literal language; Pragmatic competence; Social reasoning; Verbal irony.

Fig. 1

Illustration accompanying the beginning of one of the story with ironic comment (targeted irony)

Fig. 2

Illustration accompanying the climax of one of the story with ironic comment when the (targeted irony)

Fig. 3

Illustration accompanying the moment of ironic utterance said by a character in one of the story with ironic comment when the (targeted irony)

Fig. 4

Illustration accompanying the beginning of one of the story with ironic comment (nontargeted irony)

Fig. 5

Illustration accompanying the climax of one of the story with ironic comment when the (nontargeted irony)

Fig. 6

Illustration accompanying the moment of ironic utterance said by a character in one of the story with ironic comment when the (targeted irony)

Fig. 7

Illustration accompanying the beginning of one of the story with ironic comment (nontargeted irony, asymmetric dyad)

Fig. 8

Illustration accompanying the climax of one of the story with ironic comment when the (nontargeted irony, asymmetric dyad)

Fig. 9

Illustration accompanying the moment of ironic utterance said by a character in one of the story with ironic comment when the (targeted irony, asymmetric dyad)

Fig. 10

Accuracy in the Irony Comprehension Task (ICT). Understanding of intended meanings in ironic utterances, average results, age