ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 178–196

www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling

How do typically developing children grasp the

meaning of verbal irony?
Penny M. Pexman, Melanie Glenwright
University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4
Received 5 June 2006; accepted 8 June 2006

Abstract

Ironic remarks are an important aspect of everyday communication. The inferences involved in
understanding a speaker’s irony can be complex. How, then, do children develop the ability to
understand verbal irony? The present study was designed to address this issue. Participants were 70
six- to ten-year-old children. Each child was presented with ironic criticisms and ironic compliments
in the context of short puppet shows and several aspects of comprehension were assessed:
appreciation of the speaker’s belief, speaker’s intent to tease, and speaker’s attitude. The results
suggest the following developmental progression: For ironic criticisms, speaker belief understanding
emerges first, before understanding of speaker’s intent to tease and speaker’s attitude. These latter
two components emerge together. For ironic compliments, speaker belief understanding emerges
with understanding of the speaker’s intent to tease, and an understanding of speaker attitude emerges
later. We offer suggestions as to the factors that are important to development of these skills.
r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Verbal irony

1. Introduction

When someone says ‘‘Your research is really fascinating’’, we recognize that they could
mean this remark to be taken literally, as a compliment, or ironically, as a criticism. In
order to determine which meaning is intended, we might consider the context in which the
remark was made. Was the speaker yawning and eye-rolling through most of our

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: pexman@ucalgary.ca (P.M. Pexman).

0911-6044/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2006.06.001
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conference presentation? If so, then their remark is incongruent with their attitude
(inferred from context) and their intent was likely ironic. We might consider the speaker’s
facial expression, tone of voice, and usual way of speaking as these cues can also provide
insight to intent. Indeed, research shows that these and other cues are used by adult
comprehenders to infer meaning from ironic remarks (for a review, see Pexman, 2005).
Verbal irony is used with some frequency in adult conversation. Gibbs (2000) reported
that ironic remarks occurred on 8% of conversational turns in talk among friends. If these
remarks are not interpreted as intended then listeners could miss crucial social
information. Thus, the ability to understand irony is an important aspect of social
competence. The purpose of the present paper was to investigate development of this
ability. Most of the previous irony research has focused on the counterfactual type of
verbal irony, including both ironic criticisms (positive statements intended to convey
something negative, as when a speaker says ‘‘you are such a good student’’ to someone
who has just failed a test) and ironic compliments (negative statements intended to convey
something positive, as when a speaker says ‘‘you are such a terrible student’’ to someone
who has just earned a perfect grade on a test). Certainly, there are other forms of verbal
irony, including hyperbole and understatement, but in the present research we considered
only the counterfactual type, in the form of both ironic criticisms and ironic compliments.
There is considerable evidence that recognition of irony begins at around 6 years of age;
specifically, children begin to detect that an ironic speaker does not believe what they have
literally said (Ackerman, 1981; 1983; Andrews, Rosenblatt, Malkus, Gardner, & Winner,
1986; de Groot, Kaplan, Rosenblatt, Dews, & Winner, 1995; Dews et al., 1996; Hancock,
Dunham, & Purdy, 2000; Harris & Pexman, 2003; Nakassis & Snedeker, 2002; Winner &
Leekam, 1991). At the same time, there is evidence that this ability is still improving at age
12 or 13 (Capelli, Nakagawa, & Madden, 1990; Demorest, Meyer, Phelps, Gardner, &
Winner, 1984). One of the questions we addressed in the present study was why this
developmental window is so wide. One possibility is that irony comprehension involves
different component skills, each of which is acquired at a different point in development.
Various researchers have, in the past, used very different measures to establish irony
comprehension and it is possible that these different measures tap different component
skills, producing variable estimates of when irony comprehension is acquired. We
addressed this possibility by utilizing measures that index different aspects of irony
comprehension with children in this middle-to-late childhood range, and assessed the
correspondences among these measures. In the present work we focused, specifically, on
exploring the component skills involved in development of appreciation for ironic
criticisms and ironic compliments.

1.1. Theories of verbal irony

A number of theories of verbal irony have been proposed. The two we describe here are
relevant to the present work because they address potential differences in comprehension
for ironic criticisms and ironic compliments. According to echoic reminder theory (e.g.,
Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989; also echoic mention theory, Sperber & Wilson, 1995), irony is
made possible by a remark that echoes a violated norm or failed expectation and thus
reminds the listener that this violation has occurred. As such, the speaker’s attitude is
revealed. This theory explains why ironic criticisms are usually easier to understand than
ironic compliments. The explanation for this asymmetry is that ironic criticisms echo the
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norm or expectation that speakers will say nice things about others. Since there is no
expectation that speakers will say negative things about others, ironic compliments lack
this implicit echo and comprehension is more difficult.
The indirect negation view (Giora, 1995) suggests that irony is a form of negation that is
not explicitly marked. The ironic remark is topical but the literal message is highly
improbable. In understanding the remark the perceiver does not cancel the literal message
but compares it to the implied (ironic) meaning. The indirect negation view offers a
different explanation for the asymmetry in interpretation for ironic criticisms and ironic
compliments. That is, in order to infer that the speaker of an ironic compliment intends to
offer a positive comment the listener must negate a negative statement, and this ‘‘double
negation’’ may be more difficult than the single negation required for comprehension of
ironic criticisms.
Development: Importantly, none of the existing theories of irony address development of
the ability to appreciate verbal irony (see Creusere, 1999, for a review). There is evidence
that children attend to some of the same conditions for irony as do adults. For instance,
children’s irony comprehension is facilitated by echoic mention (Hancock et al., 2000;
Keenan & Quigley, 1999). We would argue that a developmental explanation of irony
comprehension requires more than a restatement of adult theories. As will be discussed
below, irony comprehension requires particular cognitive skills and considerable social
knowledge that are in place in adults but are developing over time in children.

1.2. Component skills for irony comprehension

Consider again our example of a potentially ironic remark: ‘‘Your research is really
fascinating’’. How can we assess whether a listener comprehends this remark as irony? The
listener should recognize that the speaker does not believe what they have literally said.
That is, they should recognize that the speaker’s statement does not reflect the speaker’s
belief; the speaker’s true belief is that the research is not at all fascinating. This alone,
however, is not sufficient for irony comprehension as the assessment of the speaker’s true
belief does not distinguish ironic remarks from lies (Demorest et al., 1984; Demorest,
Silberstein, Gardner, & Winner, 1983; Sullivan, Winner, & Hopfield, 1995; Winner &
Leekam, 1991; Winner et al., 1987). Winner and colleagues have argued that the distinction
between irony and lies involves the speaker’s intent with respect to the listener’s beliefs
about the statement. The ironic speaker does not want the listener to believe that they
intend the literal meaning of the statement: they intend the target to perceive criticism for
having boring research. The liar does want the listener to believe that they intend the literal
meaning of the statement: they intend the target to perceive a compliment about their
research. It has also been argued that in order to demonstrate that irony has been
comprehended the listener should show understanding that the speaker is being
intentionally nonliteral (Ackerman, 1982; Andrews et al., 1986; de Groot et al., 1995).
That is, the ironist is using counterfactual language deliberately, to tease the target.
Development: Several different claims have been made about the developmental
progression of component skills and irony comprehension. Ackerman (1983) suggested
that, for children, interpretation of irony was composed of two processes. The first of these
he termed ‘‘detection’’; detecting whether the literal form is appropriate to infer what the
speaker believes. The second process was labeled ‘‘inference’’, and involved judging the
speaker’s intended social purpose in making the remark. Ackerman argued that there was
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a dissociation between these two components, such that children were often capable of
detection but struggled with inference. Ackerman posited that inference was problematic
because children often lacked the knowledge required to use irony as the inferential
solution.
Hancock et al. (2000) tested Ackerman’s (1983) claims about a two stage process for
early irony comprehension. Five- and six-year-old children were presented with short
videotaped scenarios that ended with ironic criticisms (e.g., ‘‘you are a really good
basketball player’’), literal criticisms (e.g., ‘‘you are a really bad basketball player’’), ironic
compliments (again, a bad basketball player) and literal compliments (again, a good
basketball player). In order to assess detection children were asked to judge speaker belief
(‘‘Did A really think that B was a good basketball player?’’). In order to assess inference
children were asked to judge the speaker’s intent (‘‘Was A being mean or nice?’’). Results
showed that children were more accurate in their judgments of speaker belief than in their
judgments of speaker intent. Consequently, Hancock et al. concluded that, as Ackerman
had claimed, detection of nonliteral utterances is separable from interpretation of the
speaker’s pragmatic intent. Hancock et al. speculated that this separation is evident
because belief and intent judgments depend on different underlying processes. Based on
claims made by Winner and Leekam (1991), Hancock et al. suggested that the speaker
belief (detection) question indexes first-order reasoning about belief states (the belief held
in the mind of the speaker). The speaker intent (inference) question indexes second-order
reasoning about others’ belief states. That is, the child must make an inference about what
the speaker believes that the basketball player believes. While 5- and 6-year-old children
would typically be capable of first order mental state reasoning, children usually develop
second order mental state reasoning skills between ages 6 and 8 (Perner & Wimmer, 1985).
Given the difference in ages at which these reasoning skills are normally acquired, most
children would be expected to understand speaker belief before they could understand
speaker intent.
There is certainly evidence that second-order mental state reasoning is important to
irony comprehension. In a sample of 5- to 8-year-old typically developing children,
Sullivan et al. (1995) found that second-order reasoning skills (particularly, attribution of
second-order ignorance) predicted the ability to distinguish ironic remarks from lies. The
proposed link between irony comprehension and second order inferencing is also
supported by research involving individuals who struggle to understand second order
intentions, as they also tend to have difficulty understanding ironic remarks. This
relationship has been observed for children with autism (Happé, 1993) and for children
(Dennis, Purvis, Barnes, Wilkinson, & Winner, 2001) and adults (McDonald, 1992;
McDonald & Pearce, 1996) with closed head injuries.
A somewhat different view of the component processes for irony comprehension was
presented by Andrews et al. (1986) who assessed 6- to 9-year-old children’s impressions of
the ironic speaker’s meaning, intent to tease, and attitude. Differences in accuracy were
observed for these aspects of irony comprehension and hence Andrews et al. concluded
that understanding speaker belief and understanding the speaker’s nonliteral meaning
(teasing) precede understanding of the ironic speaker’s intention (to criticize or
compliment) in making the statement. This distinction could be explained by the different
cognitive skills required to make these judgments. Speaker belief and speaker’s intent to
tease could potentially be seen as first-order mental state judgments, in that the critical
issue is whether the speaker is saying something that is literally consistent or literally
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inconsistent with their belief. Speaker’s attitude is, as outlined above, more dependent on
second-order mental state reasoning.
These and other discussions of the development of irony comprehension have tended to
focus on the mental state reasoning skills involved. This has lead to the relative neglect of
two other factors: neural development and social learning. Our position is that
consideration of all of these factors will be important to a theory that explains how it is
that children come to grasp the meaning of verbal irony. We describe these factors next
because, as will be described, they influenced our hypotheses for the present study.

1.3. The role of neural development

Recently, a neuroanatomical account of understanding verbal irony was proposed by

Shamay-Tsoory, Tomer, and Aharon-Peretz (2005). These authors examined comprehen-
sion of ironic criticisms by adult patients with focal lesions. Patients with right
ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VM-PFC) lesions had the most profound deficit in irony
comprehension. Shamay-Tsoory et al. concluded that a network of neural regions is
implicated in irony comprehension, and that there are three stages of processing in this
network. First, left hemisphere language cortices are involved in the initial interpretation
of the literal meaning of an utterance. Second, the right hemisphere and frontal lobes are
involved in processing the intentional, social, and emotional information associated with
the utterance. It is in this second stage that the contradiction is detected between the literal
meaning of the utterance and the context. Third, the right VM-PFC is implicated in the
final stage of the process as the literal meaning of the utterance is integrated with other
sources of information and a decision is made about the intended meaning of the remark.
There is considerable evidence that prefrontal cortex continues to develop into
adolescence and early adulthood. This is evident, for instance, in terms of changes in
synaptic density, myelination, and electrical activity (Benes, 2001; Huttenlocher &
Dabholkar, 1997; Pfefferbaum et al., 1994; Rubia et al., 2000). The VM-PFC is involved in
a frontostriatal circuit with strong connections to the limbic system. Thus, it has been
argued that VM-PFC is well positioned to integrate affective and nonaffective information
(Happaney, Zelazo, & Stuss, 2004). This region also shows individual differences in
maturation and this variability may be related to individual differences in emotional
development, including empathy responses (Segalowitz & Davies, 2004). The VM-PFC is
also associated with mental state inferencing (Theory of Mind abilities, e.g., Gallagher
et al., 2000; Sabbagh, Moulson, & Harkness, 2004). There is some evidence that
individuals with autism, who show deficits in this type of inferencing, also display less PFC
activation than typically developing controls (Happé et al., 1996). Thus, the neural regions
implicated in irony comprehension continue to mature into early adulthood, and there is
individual variability in the development of these regions. As such, neural development
may contribute to individual differences and a wide developmental window for irony
comprehension.

1.4. The role of social learning

Each of the proposed component skills in irony comprehension seem to require social
learning in conjunction with mental state reasoning skills. Unless a child has a mental
category for ironic language (Utsumi, 2000), how could they judge that a speaker is saying
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something literally positive with the intent to criticize or literally negative with the intent to
compliment? We would also suggest that deciding whether a speaker has nonliteral intent
and, in the case of irony, intends to tease, requires that the perceiver have knowledge of
nonliteral language in general and teasing in particular. The perceiver needs to have
knowledge of teasing, which can only be acquired through social experience. This could
be experience with people saying things like ‘‘I was just teasing. I didn’t mean it’’
in the context of nonliteral remarks. For instance, there is evidence that parents’ use of
irony is related to their child’s irony appreciation (Pexman, Glenwright, James, & Krol,
2005).
Our point here is that although second-order mentalizing is a necessary cognitive skill
for irony comprehension, this skill alone cannot sufficiently explain the development of an
appreciation for verbal irony. If irony comprehension depended only on mental state
reasoning then development should proceed in the same way for understanding of ironic
criticisms and understanding of ironic compliments. At a linguistic level, ironic criticisms
and ironic compliments are not different in any principled way; both involve making a
remark using the opposite valence to that which is intended (Nakassis & Snedeker, 2002).
Certainly, children tend to find speaker belief judgments easier for ironic criticisms than for
ironic compliments in cases where an explicit echo is not provided for ironic statements (de
Groot et al., 1995; Hancock et al., 2000; Harris & Pexman, 2003) and we would predict the
same tendency for speaker belief judgments in the present study. Ironic compliments are
less conventional than ironic criticisms (Gibbs, 2000), so children will likely have less
experience with ironic compliments than with ironic criticisms. This difference in learning
opportunities could make it more difficult for children to appreciate that speakers who
make ironic compliments intend to tease the target; children may have lower accuracy for
teasing inferences for ironic compliments than for ironic criticisms.
In addition, it seemed possible that speaker attitude might be particularly difficult to
infer for ironic compliments. Recall Giora’s (1995) claim that inferences about ironic
compliments require ‘‘double negation’’ and that this may be more difficult than the single
negation required for comprehension of ironic criticisms. There is certainly evidence that
implicit double negation renders inferences more difficult in reasoning tasks (e.g., Evans &
Handley, 1999; Schroyens, Schaeken, Fias, & d’Ydewalle, 2000). Further, Jou (1988)
reported that children did not begin to understand double negation in sentences (e.g., it is
not that the doll doesn’ty) until 8 or 9 years of age. Understanding of double negation
was preceded by a phase during which children interpreted these sentences as single
negatives (e.g., it is not that the doll doesy). According to Jou (see also Müller, Sokol, &
Overton, 1999), the difficulty for children is created by a positivity bias in human thinking,
by which children’s attention is first drawn to affirmative aspects of objects and events. In
the context of our study, this bias might make speaker attitude judgments for ironic
compliments particularly difficult, because the correct answer will only be given if the child
has successfully negated the negative literal meaning. Consequently, children may be able
to make accurate speaker attitude judgments for ironic criticisms well before they are able
to make accurate speaker attitude judgments for ironic compliments.
In the present study we will assess these possibilities by examining performance on
comprehension measures for typically developing children aged 6–10 years of age. We will
include measures of speaker belief, speaker intent to tease, and speaker attitude, and will
do so for both ironic criticisms and ironic compliments. In this way, we will be able to
evaluate component skills for irony comprehension. The development of component skills
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for irony comprehension has not previously been examined separately for ironic criticisms
and ironic compliments with children in this age range.

2. Method

2.1. Participants

Participants were 70 typically developing children, aged 6–10 years (M ¼ 8; 7, range 6; 8

to 10; 10, 36 males, 34 females), recruited from elementary schools in Calgary, Alberta.
Participants were from English speaking and largely middle class families.

2.2. Materials

Twelve puppet show scenarios, which each ended in an ironic criticism, a literal
criticism, an ironic compliment, or a literal compliment, were depicted. Twenty-four child-
like puppets comprised the cast for the puppet shows and small-scale props were used for
each scenario (e.g., snowboards, soccer nets, trees). We devised scenarios that were likely
to be familiar to the 6- to 10-year-old children in our sample (e.g., snowboarding, soccer
game, hide and seek, see Appendix for examples). The speaker puppet did not perform any
significant actions but always made a criticism or compliment in response to the success or
failure of the other puppet. Narratives for the puppet shows were prerecorded by a
narrator such that ironic criticisms were made with a mocking, insincere intonation, literal
criticisms were made with a blunt, factual intonation, ironic compliments were made with a
positive, joking intonation, and literal compliments were made with a positive, sincere
intonation.
In order to assess children’s perceptions of speaker attitude a rating scale from Harris
and Pexman (2003) was used. The 5-point nice/mean scale (Fig. 1) was used to evaluate
children’s perceptions of speaker attitude. In addition, a 3-point teasing/real scale (Fig. 2)
was designed to capture children’s perceptions of whether the speaker was intending to
tease the target. We used rating scales with neutral midpoints to assess perceptions of
teasing and speaker attitude to ensure that the scales were sensitive to the possibility that
participants might be genuinely uncertain about these dimensions for ironic remarks
(Ackerman, 1983). If a forced choice response had been used instead, with no neutral
midpoint, we would not have been able to isolate this kind of uncertainty.
The nice/mean scale had 5 points, labeled Very nice, nice, not nice but not mean, mean,
and very mean. The correct perception of an ironic criticism is that it is mean, but
participants often report that it is not as mean as a literal criticism (e.g., Harris & Pexman,
2003; dubbed the ‘‘muting function’’ by Dews & Winner, 1995). As such, both mean and

Fig. 1. Nice/mean scale.

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Fig. 2. Teasing/real scale.

very mean could be correct interpretations of ironic criticisms. Similarly, both nice and very
nice could be correct interpretations of ironic compliments. As such, when we coded the
responses to the nice/mean scale we collapsed the two categories, so that nice and very nice
were both coded as nice, and mean and very mean were both coded as mean. This step in
coding was not necessary for the teasing/real scale, for which the points were labeled
teasing, not teasing but not real, and real.

2.3. Procedure

Children were tested individually and all sessions were videotaped. Prior to testing,
children were individually trained on the two rating scales in order to ensure they
understood what each face represented and also that the entire range of each scale was to
be used. After every puppet show, each child was asked the three questions listed below.
For each question, the experimenter repeated the statement made by the speaker puppet
with the same intonation as was used on the audiotape:

1. Speaker Belief Question: ‘‘When Sam said ‘‘That was a great play!’’, did he think John
made a good play or a bad play?’’
2. Speaker Attitude Question: ‘‘Point to one of the faces to show me how nice or mean
Sam was trying to be when he said, ‘That was a great play!’’.
3. Speaker Teasing Question: ‘‘Point to one of the faces to show me how teasing or real
Sam was trying to be when he said, ‘That was a great play!’’.

The order of alternatives as spoken by the experimenter (i.e., good/bad, nice/mean, and
teasing/real) was randomized across items. The entire procedure lasted approximately
35 min.

2.4. Design

The design of this study was 2 (remark type: literal, ironic) by 2 (statement tone:
criticism, compliment) within-subjects. Thus, each child watched 12 puppet shows of which
three ended with literal criticisms, three with ironic criticisms, three with literal
compliments, and three with ironic compliments. Across participants, every scenario
was presented in every condition. To achieve this, 12 versions of the materials were created,
each with a randomized order. Roughly the same number of participants was presented
with each version.
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The analyses for this study focused on six types of responses: speaker belief accuracy for
ironic criticisms, perceived teasing for ironic criticisms, perceived speaker attitude for
ironic criticisms, speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments, perceived teasing
for ironic compliments, and perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments. In order
to achieve our goal of exploring component skills for irony appreciation, we next report
the results of two main sets of analyses with these data: (1) we evaluated the relative
difficulty of the different responses, comparing the number of children with perfect
accuracy for one type of response with the number of children with perfect accuracy for
another type of response, and (2) we conducted regression analyses in order to determine
whether children’s performance on each type of response was related to their performance
on any of the other types of responses.

3. Results and discussion

Mean values or response frequencies for the six responses are presented in Table 1. As
illustrated in Table 1, participants consistently reported that literal compliments were
intended to be nice and were intended to be real. For literal criticisms participants
consistently reported that these statements were intended to be mean but showed
variability in their assessments of teasing. That is, some participants judged that literal
criticisms were intended to be teasing (perhaps because of an association between
aggression and teasing) while roughly the same percentage judged that literal criticisms
were intended to be real. The frequencies of responses summarized in Table 1 also illustrate
that participants tended to perceive that ironic criticisms were intended to be mean and
teasing but that there was considerable variability in these ratings. Similarly, participants
tended to perceive that ironic compliments were intended to be mean and teasing.
We computed subject means for each of the six responses of interest and used these
means for the remaining analyses in order to assess the correspondence among the
responses at the individual level. Correlations among the different responses are presented
in Table 2. As illustrated in Table 2, the two speaker belief accuracy responses (one for
ironic criticisms, one for ironic compliments) were significantly related, as were the two
perceived teasing responses. Participants who tended to have high speaker belief accuracy
for one type of irony also tended to have high speaker belief accuracy for the other type of

Table 1
Mean speaker belief accuracy percentage (standard deviations in parentheses) and frequency of responses to
perceived teasing and speaker attitude measures, as a function of statement type

Measure Ironic criticisms Literal criticisms Ironic compliments Literal compliments

Speaker belief accuracy 73.36 (36.19) 96.81 (9.67) 42.26 (39.33) 97.87 (7.80)
Perceived teasing
Teasing 53.59 43.92 60.00 4.81
Neither 20.57 16.82 21.95 14.42
Real 25.84 39.26 18.05 80.77

Speaker attitude
Nice 33.49 8.88 13.66 87.98
Neither 12.92 17.76 14.63 7.21
Mean 53.59 73.36 71.71 4.81
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Table 2
Correlations between child’s age and irony comprehension responses (N ¼ 70)

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Child’s age –
2. Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms .22 –
3. Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms .24* .72** –
4. Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms .04 .72** .72** –
5. Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments .25* .40** .25* .09 –
6. Perceived teasing for ironic compliments .03 .19 .40** .12 .21 –
7. Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments .28* .11 .07 .17 .55** .13

*po.05, **po.01.

irony. Similarly, participants who tended to perceive teasing in one type of ironic remark
also tended to perceive teasing in the other type of ironic remark. Thus, there is some
evidence that these judgments could be based on a common mental category for ironic
language. The correlation between the two speaker attitude responses, however, did not
reach significance. This suggests that the speaker attitude assessment for ironic criticisms
may be based on different knowledge and/or processing than is the speaker attitude
assessment for ironic compliments.
For each of the six responses we identified participants with perfect accuracy. For
instance, there was a subset of participants who were always correct in their speaker belief
assessments for ironic criticisms and so these participants had perfect accuracy on the
speaker belief response for ironic criticisms. As another example, there was a subset of
participants who always rated the speaker as intending to tease for ironic criticisms and so
these participants had perfect accuracy on the perceived teasing response for ironic
criticisms. For each response, we compared the number of participants with perfect
accuracy for the two types of irony. More children were always correct in their speaker
belief assessments of ironic criticisms (n ¼ 40) than in their speaker belief assessments of
ironic compliments (n ¼ 15, McNemar test, po.001, 13 of these children were also in the
perfect accuracy group for ironic criticisms). This is consistent with the findings reported
by de Groot et al. (1995) and Hancock et al. (2000) when no explicit echo was provided for
the ironic statements. There was, however, no significant difference in the number of
children who achieved perfect accuracy perceiving teasing for ironic criticisms (n ¼ 21) and
ironic compliments (n ¼ 25, McNemar test, p ¼ :45, 15 of these children were also in the
perfect accuracy group for ironic criticisms). Finally, significantly more children perceived
speaker attitude with perfect accuracy for ironic criticisms (n ¼ 19) than for ironic
compliments (n ¼ 2, McNemar test, po.001, neither of these children were in the perfect
accuracy group for ironic criticisms). Thus, while the perception of speaker belief and
speaker attitude were more difficult judgments for ironic compliments than for ironic
criticisms, the perception of teasing was not.
In order to assess relative difficulty of the speaker belief, speaker teasing and speaker
attitude judgments, we also compared the number of participants with perfect accuracy on
these responses for each type of irony. For ironic criticisms, the number of children with
perfect accuracy for speaker belief judgments (n ¼ 40) was significantly more than the
number of children with perfect accuracy for speaker teasing judgments (n ¼ 21,
McNemar test, po.001. all 21 of these children were also in the perfect accuracy group
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for speaker belief judgments). For ironic criticisms there was no difference in the number
of children who had perfect accuracy for teasing judgments (n ¼ 21) and speaker attitude
judgments (n ¼ 19, McNemar test, p ¼ :63, all 19 of these children were also in the perfect
accuracy group for teasing judgments). For ironic compliments, there was no difference in
the number of children with perfect accuracy for speaker belief judgments (n ¼ 15) and
speaker teasing judgments (n ¼ 25, McNemar test, p ¼ :07, only four of these children
were also in the perfect accuracy group for speaker belief judgments). For ironic
compliments there was, however, a difference in the number of children who had perfect
accuracy for teasing (n ¼ 25) and speaker attitude judgments (n ¼ 2, McNemar test,
po.001, neither of these children were also in the perfect accuracy group for teasing
judgments).
We next conducted a series of hierarchical regression analyses in order to test claims
about incremental achievements in children’s understanding of verbal irony. In each
regression analysis the criterion variable was one of our six responses of interest. The
predictor variables in each case were the child’s age in months (always entered first) and
also the child’s average score on each of the five other responses. There are several notable
findings in Table 3. One is that speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms predicted
speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments, and vice versa. The implication is that
recognition of these two types of irony depends on common processes and/or common
knowledge. Another notable finding is that age effects were not strong and did not emerge
for every comprehension variable; child’s age was a significant predictor of perceived
teasing for ironic criticisms, speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments, and perceived
speaker attitude for ironic compliments. Thus, irony comprehension tended to improve
with age but not rapidly. This finding supports the role of social learning in development of
children’s understanding of ironic remarks. A third notable finding is that perceived
teasing for ironic criticisms predicted perceived teasing for ironic compliments, and vice
versa. One interpretation of this finding is that children are developing a mental category
for teasing behavior, and this knowledge supports recognition of teasing in multiple
contexts: for situations involving both critical and complimentary intent. Finally, a
particularly interesting finding in the regression analyses is that speaker attitude judgments
for ironic criticisms were not predicted by speaker attitude judgments for ironic
compliments, and vice versa. Inferences about speaker attitude for ironic criticisms and
ironic compliments are not based on common knowledge or processes. Further, while
perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms was predicted by perceived teasing for ironic
criticisms, in that the children who perceived that the speaker was being critical also tended
to be the children who recognized that the speaker was teasing, the same relationship is not
observed for ironic compliments. Recognition of the speaker’s nonliteral intent (teasing)
and critical attitude emerge together for ironic criticisms, but speaker’s intent to tease and
complimentary attitude are separable components of understanding irony for ironic
compliments.

4. General discussion

The purpose of the present paper was to investigate component processes in children’s
comprehension of verbal irony. Previously it had been suggested that understanding of
speaker belief and speaker intent to tease precede understanding of speaker attitude for
ironic remarks (Ackerman, 1983; Andrews et al., 1986; Hancock et al., 2000). Our results
 P.M. Pexman, M. Glenwright / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 178–196
Table 3
Summary of hierarchical regression analyses

Criterion variable Step Predictor variables R2 DR2 B SEB b sr2

Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms 1 .05 .05

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Child’s age .01 .00 .21 .21
2 .68** .63**
Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms .19 .07 .35** .20
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms .24 .06 .46** .30
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments .22 .09 .24* .18
Perceived teasing for ironic compliments .03 .05 .05 .18
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments .05 .07 .06 .05
Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms 1 .06* .06*
Child’s age .01 .01 .24* .24
2 .70** .64**
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms .60 .21 .33** .20
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms .41 .10 .44** .28
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments .01 .16 .01 .01
Perceived teasing for ironic compliments .30 .08 .27** .25
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments .06 .12 .04 .03
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms 1 .00 .00
Child’s age .00 .01 .04 .04
2 .67** .67**
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms .92 .22 .48** .31
Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms .50 .13 .47** .29
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments .17 .18 .09 .07
Perceived teasing for ironic compliments .17 .10 .14 .13
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments .17 .13 .12 .09

189
 190
Table 3 (continued )

Criterion variable Step Predictor variables R2 DR2 B SEB b sr2

Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments 1 .06* .06*

P.M. Pexman, M. Glenwright / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 178–196

Child’s age .01 .00 .25* .25
2 .47** .41**
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms .43 .17 .40* .24
Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms .01 .10 .01 .01
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms .09 .09 .15 .09
Perceived teasing for ironic compliments .14 .07 .22* .19
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments .40 .08 .50** .45

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Perceived teasing for ironic compliments 1 .00 .00
Child’s age .00 .01 .03 .03
2 .29** .29**
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms .20 .31 .12 .07
Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms .58 .16 .64** .39
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms .27 .16 .32 .19
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments .44 .21 .29* .22
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments .32 .16 .26 .20
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic compliments 1 .08* .08*
Child’s age .01 .00 .28* .28
2 .42** .34**
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic criticisms .15 .23 .11 .06
Perceived teasing for ironic criticisms .06 .13 .08 .05
Perceived speaker attitude for ironic criticisms .15 .12 .21 .12
Speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments .68 .14 .55** .47
Perceived teasing for ironic compliments .17 .09 .21 .18

*po.05, **po.01.
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P.M. Pexman, M. Glenwright / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 178–196 191

were generally, but not entirely, consistent with these claims. Certainly, speaker attitude
judgments were more difficult than speaker belief judgments for both ironic criticisms and
ironic compliments. This result is consistent with Ackerman’s claims about detection and
inference as separable aspects of children’s irony comprehension. Judgments of speaker
intent to tease, however, were not always easier than judgments of speaker attitude. Thus,
claims made by Andrews et al., about understanding of speaker belief and speaker intent to
tease emerging before understanding of speaker attitude, were not entirely supported. The
number of participants who had perfect accuracy for teasing and speaker attitude
judgments was equivalent for ironic criticisms, suggesting comparable difficulty for these
two measures of comprehension. In contrast, for ironic compliments, the number of
participants who had perfect accuracy for teasing was substantially higher than the
number of participants who had perfect accuracy for speaker attitude judgments,
suggesting that speaker attitude judgments were much more difficult than teasing
judgments. Thus, the following pattern emerges for component processes. For ironic
criticisms, speaker belief understanding emerges first, before understanding of speaker’s
intent to tease and speaker’s attitude. These latter two components, according to our data,
emerge together. For ironic compliments, speaker belief understanding emerges with
understanding of the speaker’s intent to tease. Understanding of speaker attitude for ironic
compliments emerges later.
One potential source of the difference between our results for inferences about teasing
and those of Andrews et al. (1986) is the measures used. In the Andrews et al. study
children were asked to decide whether the speaker was making a mistake, teasing, or lying.
In the present study children were asked to decide whether the speaker was being real,
teasing, or neither. By including the ‘‘neither’’ category as well as the ‘‘teasing’’ category
for responses we may have isolated those children who genuinely understood the speaker’s
nonliteral intent. Indeed, the frequency data presented in Table 1 show that children chose
this ‘‘neither’’ category 20% of the time for ironic remarks. The Andrews et al. response
categories, in contrast, may have overestimated the number of children who genuinely
understood the speaker’s nonliteral intent.
Our results also showed that children tended to find ironic criticisms easier to
understand than ironic compliments. For instance children were more accurate in their
speaker belief judgments for ironic criticisms than for ironic compliments. This difference
was expected, particularly because we did not provide an explicit echo for our ironic
remarks. It has been argued that the difficulty for ironic compliments arises because,
without an explicit echo, these statements do not allude to norms or expectations. Norms
and expectations for conversation tend to involve making positive remarks and having
positive expectations. This puts ironic compliments at an interpretive disadvantage.
Consequently, speakers tend not to use ironic compliments as frequently as ironic
criticisms.
Despite the difference in conventionality of ironic criticisms and ironic compliments,
however, our results showed that children could detect teasing in ironic compliments just
as easily as they could detect teasing in ironic criticisms. This was counter to our
expectations. We anticipated that, because children have less social experience with ironic
compliments, their understanding of teasing for these remarks would lag behind their
understanding of teasing for ironic criticisms. We made this prediction because inferences
about teasing seem strongly dependent on social learning. The correlations observed in our
study suggest, in fact, that children are developing a general concept for teasing behavior.
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They seem to generalize their understanding of teasing to both ironic criticisms and ironic
compliments, so their proposed lack of experience with ironic compliments does not limit
their ability to recognize that the speakers who make ironic compliments are intending to
tease.
It also seems that the children’s concept of teasing is strongly associated with aggre-
ssion. As illustrated in Table 1, many children reported that literal criticisms were
intended to tease, but very few children reported that literal compliments were intended
to tease. The children understood that for both literal criticisms and literal compliments
the speakers believed what they had actually said, yet still thought that some of the
speakers of literal criticisms were intending to tease. This suggests that some children
inferred an intent to tease from the aggression or negativity in a statement. This may
explain why children were able to recognize the speaker’s intent to tease for ironic
compliments even when they could not recognize the speaker’s attitude, whereas
recognition of the speaker’s intent to tease for ironic criticisms was dependent on
recognition of the speaker’s attitude. The negativity in ironic criticisms is only apparent if
the speaker’s attitude is understood correctly. Hence, recognition of teasing for ironic
criticisms is not possible unless the speaker’s attitude is recognized. In contrast, the
negativity in ironic compliments is in the literal meaning. Thus, children could recognize
that these remarks are teasing because they detect negativity and yet not recognize that the
speaker’s attitude is actually positive.
We also expected that speaker attitude would be especially difficult to detect for ironic
compliments because of the complex inferences involved. Essentially, the speaker’s
complimentary intent is only evident to children who are able to activate the negative
literal meaning and then negate that negative literal meaning. The results of the present
study confirmed this expectation, as only 2 of 70 children were always accurate in their
inferences about the attitudes of speakers who made ironic compliments. Many of our
measures of irony comprehension were strongly related: for instance, the children who
inferred speaker belief correctly for ironic criticisms tended to be the same children who
inferred speaker belief correctly for ironic compliments. Similarly, the children
who inferred that the speaker was teasing for ironic criticisms tended to be the same
children who inferred that the speaker was being mean for ironic criticisms and also tended
to infer that the speaker was teasing for ironic compliments. These relationships suggest
that these aspects of understanding are supported by common neural processes and social-
cognitive skills. The speaker attitude measure for ironic compliments, however, was only
related to speaker belief accuracy for ironic compliments. We would argue that this is
because the speaker belief and speaker attitude judgments for ironic compliments require a
skill that is not invoked to the same extent by the other irony comprehension measures. In
order to deal with double negation, we propose that inhibitory control skills are required.
Importantly, these skills would not be sufficient to understand ironic compliments, as
children would also need social experience with these kinds of remarks in order to have
knowledge of the possibility that speakers might deliver compliments in this way.
Certainly, mental state inferencing skills would also be important. What we are suggesting
here is that successful processing of the double negation involved in ironic compliments
also requires inhibitory control skills.
Inhibitory control is an executive function closely tied to working memory (Pennington,
1994), and it involves inhibition or suppression of activated representations. For an ironic
compliment the negative literal meaning is initially activated and must be inhibited or
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
P.M. Pexman, M. Glenwright / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 178–196 193

negated in order to achieve accurate comprehension. Inhibitory control mechanisms have

been localized to prefrontal cortex, particularly dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC,
Diamond, 2002; Dias, Robbins, & Roberts, 1996; Mecklinger, Weber, Gunter, & Engle,
2003; Metzler & Parkin, 2000). As mentioned in the Introduction, Shamay-Tsoory et al.
(2005) recently localized comprehension of ironic criticisms to right VM-PFC. Given the
reasoning outlined above, we predict that comprehension of ironic compliments would
also localize to right VM-PFC but in addition would implicate DL-PFC. We also predict
that if one were to assess inhibitory control skills in children, using executive function
measures, performance on those measures would be correlated with children’s
comprehension of ironic compliments. Our hope is that these predictions will be tested
in future research.

5. Conclusions

A full understanding of verbal irony is an important aspect of social-cognitive

development that unfolds over a long period between middle and late childhood and
involves several incremental achievements. Children’s ability to grasp the meaning of
verbal irony will depend on their neural maturation, mentalizing skills, and social learning.
If any one of these factors is deficient, then the ability to fully comprehend ironic speech
will not be realized.

Appendix

Sample puppet show #1

This is Sam, and this is John. They play on the same soccer team. It is the last few
minutes of a game.
Outcome 1:
John kicks the ball, scoring a goal.
Sam says: ‘‘That was a great play!’’ (Literal compliment)
or
Sam says: ‘‘That was a terrible play!’’ (Ironic compliment)
Outcome 2:
John kicks the ball, missing a goal.
Sam says: ‘‘That was a great play!’’ (Ironic criticism)
or
Sam says: ‘‘That was a terrible play!’’ (Literal criticism)

Sample puppet show #2

Hide and go seek scenario

This is Kate, and this is Jill. Kate and Jill live on the same street. They are
outside playing hide and seek with all the neighborhood kids. Jill hides first while Kate
counts.
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194 P.M. Pexman, M. Glenwright / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 178–196

Outcome 1:
Jill hid really well and Kate couldn’t find her.
Kate says: ‘‘Tricky hiding spot!’’ (Literal compliment)
or
Kate says: ‘‘Easy hiding spot!’’ (Ironic compliment)
Outcome 2:
Jill’s hiding spot was terrible and Kate found her right away.
Kate says: ‘‘Tricky hiding spot!’’ (Ironic criticism)
or
Kate says: ‘‘Easy hiding spot!’’ (Literal criticism)

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