title: The development of joke and irony understanding: a study with 3- to 6-year-old children.
abstract: Previous research suggests that comprehending ironic utterances is a relatively late-developing skill, emerging around 5-6 years of age. This study investigated whether younger children might show an earlier understanding when ironic utterances are performed in familiar communicative situations, and investigated the relationships among irony comprehension, language, and theory of mind (ToM) abilities. A group of 100 children aged 3.0-6.5 years was presented with 4 types of puppet scenarios depicting different communicative interactions: control, joke, contingent irony and background irony stories. Results suggested that (a) even younger children easily understand jokes, and may sometimes understand ironies; (b) children's comprehension of irony continues to develop across early childhood; and (c) receptive vocabulary scores had simultaneous effects on irony comprehension and ToM performance.
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, University of Turin.
authors.forename: Romina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Angeleri
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Science, Department of Psychology, University of Turin.
authors.forename: Gabriella
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Airenti
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child; D056345:Theory of Mind; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014925:Wit and Humor as Topic