title: Children's understanding of social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony.
abstract: To bridge the social-reasoning focus of developmental research on irony understanding and the pragmatic focus of research with adult populations, this cross-sectional study examines 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (n = 72) developing understanding of both social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony, when compared with adults (n = 24). Although 5-year-olds lag behind the other age groups in their reasoning about the speaker's meaning, belief, intention, and motivation, adults are consistently superior to children of all ages on these social-cognitive measures. In contrast, limited age-related differences were found in participants' judgment of the social-communicative function of irony (how nice, mean, and funny irony is). The findings help to reconcile previous discrepant claims as to the age when children come to understand irony.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Phonetics, Faculty of Arts, Charles, University in Prague, Nám. J. Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague 1, CzechRepublic. eva.filippova@ff.cuni.cz
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Filippova
authors.forename: Janet Wilde
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Astington
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D012951:Socialization; D013067:Speech Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014925:Wit and Humor as Topic; D055815:Young Adult