Cover not available
Article In:
Pragmatics & Cognition
Vol. 30:2 (2023) ► pp.412–443

Verbal irony and the implicitness of the echo

The processing of young and older adults

| University of Florence
| University of Florence
| University of Neuchâtel

Speakers can express a critical, dissociative attitude by being ironic. According to the Echoic account of verbal irony, this attitude targets a proposition that echoes a thought attributed to someone other than the speaker herself at the present time. This study investigated the role of echo in irony processing across the lifespan. Through a self-paced reading task, we assessed whether the degree of explicitness of the proposition echoed by the ironical statement and the age of the participant influenced irony processing. Our results show that, independently of age, ironic statements were costlier to process than literal statements, with aging further increasing difficulty. Crucially, our manipulation of the echo affected reading times: it was more complex to process irony when this echoed an implicature or an implicit expectation, particularly for older adults. This work corroborates the role of the echo in verbal irony providing insights into age-related changes in irony processing.

Keywords: irony comprehension, echoic account, degree of explicitness, ageing
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The role of the echo in understanding and processing irony
    • 1.2Irony across the lifespan
  • 2.The present study
    • 2.1Method
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Materials
      • 2.1.3Pilot study for the implicit echo condition
      • 2.1.4Procedure
    • 2.2Predictions
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Statistical analysis
    • 3.2Descriptive statistics of reading times
    • 3.3GLMMs of reading times of the target sentence
    • 3.4GLMMs of reading times of the wrap-up sentence
    • 3.5Analysis of the Autism Quotient (AQ) Test as Neuropsychological covariate measure
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Does the degree of explicitness of the echo influence the processing of irony?
    • 4.2Does age affect the processing of irony?
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Credit author statement
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References
Anderson, Karen, Jake Harwood & Mary Lee Hummert
2005 The grandparent-grandchild relationship: Implications for models of intergenerational communication. Human Communication Research 31(2). 268–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Angeleri, Romina, & Gabriella Airenti
2014 The development of joke and irony understanding: A study with 3-to 6-year-old children. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale 68(2). 133–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bambini, Valentina, Lotte Van Looy, Kevin Demiddele & Walter Schaeken
2021 What is the contribution of executive functions to communicative-pragmatic skills? Insights from aging and different types of pragmatic inference. Cognitive Processing 22(3). 435–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, Simon, Sally Wheelwright, Richard Skinner, Joanne Martin & Emma Clubley
2001 The autism-spectrum quotient (AQ): Evidence from Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism, malesand females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 31(1). 5–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker
2015 Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Daniel M., Wendy Loken Thornton & Jessica A. Sommerville
2011 Theory of mind through the ages: Older and middle-aged adults exhibit more errors than do younger adults on a continuous false belief task. Experimental Aging Research 37(5). 481–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bischetti, Luca, Irene Ceccato, Serena Lecce, Elena Cavallini & Valentina Bambini
2019 Pragmatics and theory of mind in older adults’ humor comprehension. Current Psychology 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burke, Deborah M. & Meredith A. Shafto
2011 Language and aging. In Fergus I. M. Craik & Timothy A. Salthouse (eds.), The handbook of aging and cognition, 381–451. New York: Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Byrd, Mark
1991 Adult age differences in the ability to read and remember metaphor. Educational Gerontology: An International Quarterly 17(4). 297–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Claeskens, Gerda & Nils Lid Hjort
2008 Minimizing average risk in regression models. Econometric Theory 24(2). 493–527. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. & Richard J. Gerrig
1984 On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 1131. 121–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Jacob
2013 Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cordonier, Natacha, Marion Fossard & Maud Champagne-Lavau
2020 Differential impairments in irony comprehension in brain-damaged individuals: Insight from contextual processing, theory of mind, and executive functions. Neuropsychology 34(7). 750–763. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Craik, Fergus I. & Ellen Bialystok
2006 Cognition through the lifespan: Mechanisms of change. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(3). 131–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Creusere, Marlena A.
2000 A developmental test of theoretical perspectives on the understanding of verbal irony: Children’s recognition of allusion and pragmatic insincerity. Metaphor & Symbol 15 (1/2). 29–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dash, Ch, Sanjeev Kumar, Ajit Kumar Behera, Satchidananda Dehuri & Ashish Ghosh
2023 An outliers detection and elimination framework in classification task of data mining. Decision Analytics Journal 61. 100164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deliens, Gaétane, Fanny Papastamou, Nicolas Ruytenbeek, Philippine Geelhand & Mikhail Kissine
2018 Selective pragmatic impairment in autism spectrum disorder: Indirect requests versus irony. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 48 (9). 2938–2952. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dews, Shelly, Ellen Winner, Joan Kaplan, Elizabeth Rosenblatt, Malia Hunt, Karen Lim, Angela McGovern, Alison Qualter & Bonnie Smarsh
1996 Children’s understanding of the meaning and functions of verbal irony. Child Development 67(6). 3071–3085. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Domaneschi, Filippo & Simona Di Paola
2019 The aging factor in presupposition processing. Journal of Pragmatics 1401. 70–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fabiani, Monica
2012 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: A psychophysiologist’s view of cognitive aging. Psychophysiology 49 (3). 283–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filik, Ruth, & Linda M. Moxey
2010 The on-line processing of written irony. Cognition 116(3). 421–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filippova, Eva
2014 Irony production and comprehension. In Matthews, Danielle (ed.), Pragmatic development in first language acquisition, 261–278. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Filippova, Eva, & Janet W. Astington
2008 Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development 791. 126–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garmendia, Joana
2018 Irony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gaudreau, Geneviève, Laura Monetta, Joël Macoir, Robert Laforce Jr., Stéphane Poulin & Carol Hudon
2013 Verbal irony comprehension in older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychology 27(6). 702–712. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W.
1986 On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115(1). 3–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hancock, Jeffrey T., Philip J. Dunham & Kelly Purdy
2000 Children’s comprehension of critical and complimentary forms of verbal irony. Journal of Cognition and Development 1(2). 227–248. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Happé, Francesca G.
1993 Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory. Cognition 48(2). 101–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, Melanie & Penny M. Pexman
2003 Children’s perceptions of the social functions of verbal irony. Discourse Processes 36(3). 147–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henry, Julie D., Louise H. Phillips, Ted Ruffman & Phoebe E. Bailey
2013 A meta-analytic review of age differences in theory of mind. Psychology and Aging 28(3). 826–839. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hubert, Mia & Stephan Van der Veeken
2008 Outlier detection for skewed data. Journal of Chemometrics: A Journal of the Chemometrics Society 22(3–4). 235–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hummert, Mary L., Teri A. Garstka, Ellen Bouchard Ryan & Jaye L. Bonnesen
2004 The role of age stereotypes in interpersonal communication. In Jon F. Nussbaum & Justine Coupland (eds.), The Handbook of communication and aging research, 111–134. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Julia, George A. Miller & Dan Sperber
1984 Test of the mention theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1). 112–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaakinen, Johanna K., Henri Olkoniemi, Taina Kinnari & Jukka Hyönä
2014 Processing of written irony: An eye movement study. Discourse Processes 51(4). 287–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Thomas R. & Kathleen Quigley
1999 Do young children use echoic information in their comprehension of sarcastic speech? A test of echoic mention theory. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 17(1). 83–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Köder, Franziska, & Ingrid Lossius Falkum
2021 Irony and perspective-taking in children: The roles of norm violations and tone of voice. Frontiers in Psychology 121. 624604. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kreuz, Roger J. & Sam Glucksberg
1989 How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of experimental psychology: General 118.4. 374.Google Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, Sachi, Sam Glucksberg & Mary Brown
1995 How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 124(1). 3–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Per B. Brockhoff & Rune H. B. Christensen
2017 lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software 821. 1–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lenth, Russel V.
2021 Estimated marginal means, aka least-squares means [R Package Emmeans Version 1.6. 0]. Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).Google Scholar
Mashal, Nira, Ronit Gavrieli & Gitit Kavé
2011 Age-related changes in the appreciation of novel metaphoric semantic relations. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 18(5). 527–543. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mazzaggio, Greta & Luca Surian
2018 A diminished propensity to compute scalar implicatures is linked to autistic traits. Acta Linguistica Academica 65(4). 651–668. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mazzarella, Diana & Nausicaa Pouscoulous
2021 Pragmatics and epistemic vigilance: A developmental perspective. Mind & Language 36(3). 355–376. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2023 Ironic speakers, vigilant hearers. Intercultural Pragmatics 20(2). 111–132. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Milosavljevic, A.
forthcoming). Experiments on the development of irony. Walking through a methodological maze. In Banasik-Jemielniak, N. Kałowski, P and Zajączkowska, M. Studying verbal irony and sarcasm. Palgrave Macmillan.
Murman, Daniel L.
2015 The impact of age on cognition. Seminars in Hearing 36(3). 111–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Dana R., Meredyth Daneman & Bruce A. Schneider
2006 Why do older adults have difficulty following conversations? Psychology and Aging 21(1). 49–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakassis, Constantine & Jesse Snedeker
2002 Beyond sarcasm: Intonation and context as relational cues in children’s recognition of irony. In Barbora Skarabela, Sarah Fish & Anna H.-J. Do (eds.), Proceedings of the twenty-sixth Boston University conference on language development, 429–440. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Nasreddine, Ziad S. & Bhavini B. Patel
2016 Validation of Montreal cognitive assessment, MoCA, alternate French versions. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences 43(5). 665–671. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nasreddine, Ziad S., Natalie A. Phillips, Valérie Bédirian, Simon Charbonneau, Victor Whitehead, Isabelle Collin, Jeffrey L. Cummings & Howard Chertkow
2005 The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: A brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 53(4). 695–699. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nilsen, Elizabeth S., Melanie Glenwright & Vanessa Huyder
2011 Children and adults understand that verbal irony interpretation depends on listener knowledge. Journal of Cognition and Development 12(3). 374–409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nippold, Marilyn A., Linda D. Uhden & Ilsa E. Schwarz
1997 Proverb explanation through the lifespan: A developmental study of adolescents and adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40(2). 245–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palacios, Sánchez C., M. V. Trianes Torres & M. J. Blanca Mena
2009 Negative aging stereotypes and their relation with psychosocial variables in the elderly population. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics 48(3). 385–390. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Panzeri, Francesca, Greta Mazzaggio, Beatrice Giustolisi, Silvia Silleresi & Luca Surian
2022 The atypical pattern of irony comprehension in autistic children. Applied Psycholinguistics 43(4). 757–784. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pexman, Penny M. & Melanie Glenwright
2007 How do typically developing children grasp the meaning of verbal irony? Journal of Neurolinguistics 20(2). 178–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Louise H., Roy Allen, Rebecca Bull, Alexandra Hering, Matthias Kliegel & Shelley Channon
2015 Older adults have difficulty in decoding sarcasm. Developmental Psychology 51(12). 1840–1852. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
R Core Team
(2023) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. 〈[URL]〉.
Reinecke, Robert, Simona Di Paola, Filippo Domaneschi & Marion Fossard
2022 Presupposition processing declines with age. Cognitive Processing 23(3). 479–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ronderos, Camilo R., Ira Noveck & John Tomlinson
2020 Intentionality, speaker’s attitude and the processing of verbal irony. In Proceedings for the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. [URL]
Ryan, Ellen, Howard Giles, Giampieto Bartolucci & Karen Henwood
1986 Psycholinguistic and social psychological components of communication by and with the elderly. Language & Communication 6(1/2). 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saban-Bezalel, Ronit, Dror Dolfin, Nathaniel Laor & Nira Mashal
2019 Irony comprehension and mentalizing ability in children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 581. 30–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwoebel, John, Shelly Dews, Ellen Winner & Kavitha Srinivas
2000 Obligatory processing of the literal meaning of ironic utterances: Further evidence. Metaphor & Symbol 15(1/2). 47–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan
1984 Verbal irony: Pretense or echoic mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1). 130–136. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson
1981 Irony and the use-mention distinction. Philosophy 31. 143–184.Google Scholar
Spotorno, Nicola & Ira Noveck
2014 When is irony effortful? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(4). 1649. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spotorno, Nicola, Eric Koun, Jérôme Prado, Jean-Baptiste Van Der Henst & Ira A. Noveck
2012 Neural evidence that utterance-processing entails mentalizing: The case of irony. NeuroImage 63(1). 25–39.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Kate, Ellen Winner & Natalie Hopfield
1995 How children tell a lie from a joke: The role of second-order mental state attributions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 13(2). 191–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Symeonidou, Irene
2018 The development of theory of mind and pragmatics in adolescents. London: UCL PhD dissertation.
Țurcan, Alexandra & Ruth Filik
2016 An eye-tracking investigation of written sarcasm comprehension: The roles of familiarity and context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 42(12). 1867. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Investigating sarcasm comprehension using eye-tracking during reading. In Angeliki Athanasiadou & Herbert L. Colston (eds.), Irony in language use and communication, 255–276. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Uekermann, Jennifer, Shelley Channon & Irene Daum
2006 Humor processing, mentalizing, and executive function in normal aging. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society 12(2). 184–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Uekermann, Jennifer, Patrizia Thoma & Irene Daum
2008 Proverb interpretation changes in aging. Brain and Cognition 67(1). 51–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Tiel, Bob & Mikhail Kissine
2018 Quantity-based reasoning in the broader autism phenotype: A web-based study. Applied Psycholinguistics 39(6). 1373–1403. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weissman, Benjamin & Marina Terkourafi
2019 Are false implicatures lies? An empirical investigation. Mind & Language 34(2). 221–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre
2006 The pragmatics of verbal irony: Echo or pretence? Lingua 116(10). 1722–1743. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber
2012 Explaining irony. In Deirdre Wilson & Dan Sperber (eds.), Meaning and relevance, 123–146. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winner, Ellen & Sue Leekam
1991 Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker’s second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9(2). 257–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, Jiawei, Susanto Rahardja & Pasi Fränti
2019 Outlier detection: how to threshold outlier scores? In Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing and Cloud Computing (AIIPCC ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 37, 1–6. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zehr, Jeremy & Florian Schwarz
2018 PennController for Internet Based Experiments (IBEX). DOI logoGoogle Scholar