Irony Comprehension in Action: A New Test of Processing for Verbal Irony

Abstract

There are now a number of theories of irony processing: Modular accounts suggest the literal meaning is usually accessed first and the ironic meaning considered later, whereas interactive accounts suggest the ironic meaning is considered in the earliest moments of processing. We used a visual world paradigm to examine the issue of how ironic meaning is processed from speech. Participants heard literal and ironic statements and, for each statement, judged speaker intent by selecting one of a pair of objects displayed on a tabletop. Results showed equivalent response latencies for literal criticisms and ironic criticisms, suggesting ironic meanings do not necessarily take longer to process than literal meanings. Participants' eye gaze provided no evidence that they considered (looked to) the literal response object first when interpreting ironic remarks. Instead, they showed early consideration of ironic meaning. We interpret our findings to be most consistent with an interactive account of irony processing.