“Sure I’ll help – I’ve just been sitting around doing nothing at school all day”: cognitive flexibility and child irony interpretation

Successful peer relations in older children depend on proficiency with banter, which in turn frequently involves verbal irony. Individual differences in successful irony interpretation have traditionally been attributed to Theory of Mind. Our premise was that the key factor might in fact be cognitive flexibility, the ability to switch between different perspectives (here: on the same utterance). We also wished to extend the focus of previous irony studies, which have almost exclusively examined Simple Irony, where the literal meaning conflicts with observable physical evidence (e.g. ‘great day for a picnic’ when viewing a downpour). Therefore, we also examined how children interpreted more Complex Irony, where listeners must consider at a deeper level the common ground shared with the speakers (e.g. general knowledge / cultural common ground or information about the particular speaker). In Study 1 we found that for six- to eight-year-olds both cognitive flexibility and Theory of Mind contributed unique variance to Simple Irony interpretation, when statistically controlling for non-verbal reasoning and structural language standardised scores. Neither inhibitory control, working memory nor general knowledge correlated with irony interpretation. Six- to eight-year-olds were at floor for Complex Irony. In Study 2 we found that cognitive flexibility contributed unique variance to how ten- to twelve-year-olds interpreted Complex Irony, while controlling for non-verbal reasoning, structural language and specific knowledge required. We are the first to examine the relationship with cognitive flexibility and conclude it must be taken into account when investigating the relationship between Theory of Mind and irony interpretation

Data for: Asymmetry of affect in verbal irony understanding: What about the N400 and P600 components?

We investigated the neurocognitive processes behind the asymmetry of affect observed in irony understanding, where ironic criticism is more easily understood than ironic praise. We recorded the ERPs of participants while they listened to positive (e.g., “These children are always smiling”) or negative (e.g., “His son is very unfortunate”) remarks pronounced with a sincere or ironic prosody. Participants had to decide whether or not the speaker was sincere. Two ERP components were of interest: the N400 and the P60

Kill the Song—Steal the Show: What Does Distinguish Predicative Metaphors From Decomposable Idioms?

International audienc

The interaction between textual structures and prior knowledge: Hypotheses, data and simulations

International audienceOur purpose was to compare the effect of two types of textual semantic coherence - causal and teleological - oil the organization of the mental representation elaborated after reading by learners with different levels of prior knowledge. Beginners, Intermediates and Advanced in computer domain read either the causal or the teleological version of a text describing three functions of a text editor, then performed a cued recall and a recognition task. We assumed that Advanced learners build a mental representation of the domain organized in a hierarchical goal/sub-goals structure, whereas Beginners and Intermediates have a mental representation organized in a causal path. If this is so, the results should indicate a significant interaction between prior knowledge and the semantic coherence of the texts: for the Advanced learners, recall and recognition of the teleological text should be better, whereas for the Beginners and Intermediates, the reverse was expected. As we assumed, results indicated that a teleological organization of textual information facilitated the comprehension of Advanced participants while a temporal-causal organization facilitated the comprehension of Beginner and Intermediate participants. The Construction-Integration model of Kintsch (1988, 1998) was used to simulate the recall results and to reproduce the effect of prior knowledge on the retrieval of textual information

Structures textuelles et niveaux d'expertise

Summary: Text structures and prior knowledge The purpose of this experiment was to show a differential effect of two types of textual structures (causal and teleological) on text comprehension with subjects of different levels of expertise (novices, intermediates and experts) in a domain describing three functions of the text-editor «Microsoft Word». We assumed an interaction between text structure and prior knowledge. Experts performed better than the two other levels of expertise, with the exception of cued recall, and this effect depended on the semantic text structure. Additionally, the results showed the existence of an intermediate effect in the recall of the causal text and emphazised the necessity to study the representation elaborated in relation with learners' prior knowledge. Key word: learning, prior knowledge, intermediate effect, text structures.Résumé Le but de cette expérience est de montrer qu'il existe un effet différentiel de deux types de structures textuelles (causale et téléologique) sur la mémorisation et la compréhension de textes par des sujets novices, intermédiaires et experts dans un domaine décrivant trois procédures du logiciel de traitement de texte Microsoft Word. Les résultats indiquent que les performances des experts sont supérieures à celles des intermédiaires et des novices sauf dans l'épreuve de rappel indicé et que cet effet dépend de la structure sémantique des textes. Ils montrent l'existence d'un effet intermédiaire dans le rappel du texte causal et renforcent la nécessité d'étudier la représentation construite en interaction avec les connaissances initiales. Mots-clés : apprentissage, connaissance initiale, effet intermédiaire, structures textuelles.Caillies S., Tapiero Isabelle. Structures textuelles et niveaux d'expertise. In: L'année psychologique. 1997 vol. 97, n°4. pp. 611-639

Verbal irony processing: How do contrast and humour correlate?

International audienceVerbal irony relies on contrast, that is, incongruity between the situational context and the ironic assertion. But is the degree of contrast related to the perceived humorousness of ironic comments? We answered this question by conducting two experiments. In the first experiment, participants were asked to read a list of sentence pairs (ironic or control) and judge the extent to which the meaning of the first sentence contrasted with that of the second. In the second experiment, participants were invited to rate the humorousness of ironic comments compared with their literal counterparts. Results showed that ironic remarks were rated as more contrasting and more humorous than their literal counterparts, but that humour only emerged from a moderate contrast

The interaction between textual structures and prior knowledge: Hypotheses, data and simulations

International audienceOur purpose was to compare the effect of two types of textual semantic coherence - causal and teleological - oil the organization of the mental representation elaborated after reading by learners with different levels of prior knowledge. Beginners, Intermediates and Advanced in computer domain read either the causal or the teleological version of a text describing three functions of a text editor, then performed a cued recall and a recognition task. We assumed that Advanced learners build a mental representation of the domain organized in a hierarchical goal/sub-goals structure, whereas Beginners and Intermediates have a mental representation organized in a causal path. If this is so, the results should indicate a significant interaction between prior knowledge and the semantic coherence of the texts: for the Advanced learners, recall and recognition of the teleological text should be better, whereas for the Beginners and Intermediates, the reverse was expected. As we assumed, results indicated that a teleological organization of textual information facilitated the comprehension of Advanced participants while a temporal-causal organization facilitated the comprehension of Beginner and Intermediate participants. The Construction-Integration model of Kintsch (1988, 1998) was used to simulate the recall results and to reproduce the effect of prior knowledge on the retrieval of textual information

Data for: Asymmetry of affect in verbal irony understanding: What about the N400 and P600 components?

We investigated the neurocognitive processes behind the asymmetry of affect observed in irony understanding, where ironic criticism is more easily understood than ironic praise. We recorded the ERPs of participants while they listened to positive (e.g., “These children are always smiling”) or negative (e.g., “His son is very unfortunate”) remarks pronounced with a sincere or ironic prosody. Participants had to decide whether or not the speaker was sincere. Two ERP components were of interest: the N400 and the P600THIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV