Turkish Verbal Irony Comprehension in Children Aged 5 and 6 Years

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the accuracy rate of the comprehension and processing times of ironic and literal utterances among five- and six-year-old Turkish-speaking children (N = 60) and a control group of adults (N = 30) and whether vocabulary, character dyads, morphological and syntactic complexity, and context have an effect on their comprehension. In this study, audio recordings of ten narrated stories, five of which ended with ironic sentences and five with literal sentences, were used. After listening to the stories, the participants were asked to click on teasing or real emojis to show their understanding of the speaker’s attitude and their reaction times were analyzed based on the Standard Pragmatic Model and the Direct Access Model. The stories were followed by two optional close-ended questions and three open-ended questions including first-order ToM and second-order ToM questions. For the study’s statistical analysis, the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, Mann-Whitney U test, and descriptive statistics were utilized. The findings of the study revealed that children performed better when answering questions about literal stories than those about ironic stories and morphological and syntactic complexity, vocabulary, word length, and character dyads in the stories had no effect on the participants' comprehension. The only explanation for their accuracy rates could be the context of the stories and their exposure to ironic and literal statements. Furthermore, it was found that the types of Theory of Mind questions had no effect on their ability to provide accurate responses. Another finding of the study was that children's reaction times were faster after listening to ironic stories than literal ones. This finding is similar to the findings of studies supporting the Direct Access Model (DAM). However, more research on the processing of ironic expressions within the context of the Standard Pragmatic Model and the Direct Access Model is required.