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.

The acquisition of figurative meanings

“…Some studies have also investigated whether characteristics of the ironic speaker and the speaker-addressee relationship influence children's understanding. Initial evidence suggests that describing the ironic speaker as mean (Pexman, Glenwright, Hala, Kowbel, & Jungen, 2006), as parent compared to sibling (Massaro et al, 2013), or as adult compared to child (Banasik-Jemielniak & Bokus, 2019) facilitates children's comprehension. However, describing the ironic speaker as funny in contrast to serious yielded no such effect (Climie & Pexman, 2008).…”

“Wonderful! We’ve just missed the bus.” – Parental use of irony and children’s irony comprehension

“…They can also detect some pragmatic functions of irony [e.g.8, 12, 14 16] Some studies reported frequent failures with children as late as when they are 13 [17][18]. However, results from some newer studies show that this emerging skill can be observed much sooner, even with 3-and 4-year-olds [19][20][21][22]. The understanding of irony requires a correct identification of the speaker's intention and the understanding of the attitude towards the situation or person the comment refers to [23].…”

Children's processing of written irony: An eye-tracking study

“…At the early stage of comprehension, children first learn to understand that with irony speakers say something other than what they mean. Nonetheless, at this early stage children's comprehension accuracy is low (c.f., Banasik-Jemielniak, 2019). Children also tend to misinterpret ironic phrases as literal language (e.g., Demorest et al, 1984;Loukusa & Leinonen, 2008), or misunderstand them as lies (Demorest et al, 1984;Winner & Leekam, 1991).…”

“…Most of the previous studies on children's irony comprehension have presented ironic and literal language examples using illustrated stories (e.g., Banasik-Jemielniak, & Bokus, 2019;Filippova & Astington, 2008;Köder & Falkum, 2021;Winner & Leekam, 1991) and puppet shows (e.g., Climie & Pexman, 2008;Harris & Pexman, 2003). These studies have helped map the development of children's irony comprehension, but the issue of how children process and comprehend written irony remains underexplored.…”