Children’s Understanding of Social-Cognitive and Social-Communicative Aspects of Discourse Irony

• Autores: Eva Filippova, Janet Wilde Astington
• Localización: Child development, ISSN 0009-3920, Vol. 81, Nº. 3, 2010, págs. 913-928
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 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.