A novel task to evaluate irony comprehension and its essential elements in Spanish speakers

Abstract

An ironic statement transmits the opposite meaning to its literal counterpart and is one of the most complex communicative acts. Thus, it has been proposed to be a good indicator of social communication ability. Prosody and facial expression are two crucial paralinguistic cues that can facilitate the understanding of ironic statements. The primary aim of this study was to create and evaluate a task of irony identification that could be used in neuroimaging studies. We independently evaluated three cues, contextual discrepancy, prosody and facial expression, and selected the best cue that would lead participants in fMRI studies to identify a stimulus as ironic in a reliable way. This process included the design, selection, and comparison of the three cues, all of which have been previously associated with irony detection. The secondary aim was to correlate irony comprehension with specific cognitive functions. Results showed that psycholinguistic properties could differentiate irony from other communicative acts. The contextual discrepancy, prosody, and facial expression were relevant cues that helped detect ironic statements; with contextual discrepancy being the cue that produced the highest classification accuracy and classification time. This task can be used successfully to test irony comprehension in Spanish speakers using the cue of interest. The correlation of irony comprehension with cognitive functions did not yield consistent results. A more heterogeneous sample of participants and a broader battery of tests may be needed to find reliable cognitive correlates of irony comprehension.

Irony detection engages the Precuneus and Inferior Frontal Gyrus and relies on integration of contextual cues and inferential skills

“…This result agrees with our previous behavioral study (26) and with the proposal that irony is one of the most difficult communication forms (5). With regard to the neural regions involved, we found that the precuneus, which has been associated with ToM, presented consistent activation during the detection of the ironic statements.…”

“…The contextual discrepancy task we employed showed that ironic statements were difficult to detect, having the lowest accuracy and highest classification latency. This result agrees with our previous behavioral study (Valles-Capetillo et al, 2022) and with the proposal that irony is one of the most difficult communication forms (Wilson & Sperber, 1981). Regarding the neural regions involved, we found that the precuneus, which has been associated with ToM, presented consistent activation during the detection of the ironic statements.…”

“…Regarding executive functions, inhibitory control was a predictor for the accuracy and latency of the classification of white lies. The fact that white lies are rated as less sincere than other statements (Valles-Capetillo et al, 2022) suggests that inhibition of a preponderant interpretation plays an important role (Christ et al, 2009).…”

“…To assess irony detection, a contextual discrepancy task for Mexican adults was created (Valles-Capetillo et al, 2022). Fifty-six social contexts and 14 statements were constructed.…”

“…The classification screen was presented in text modality. Stimuli were presented in semi-random order (Valles-Capetillo et al, 2022).…”