“You are so clean!”: ToM, Irony production and affective relationships in school-aged children

Understanding an ironic utterance, such as “You are so clean!” pronounced by a schoolmate when someone fell down in a mud puddle, is a complex process. Previous research suggests that an advanced theory of mind, typically emerging in middle childhood, is responsible for the relatively late irony understanding (Winner 1997; Keenan-Quigley 1999). Irony might also be considered as demanding precisely because it involves an implicit evaluation of the speaker, charged with an affective attitude (Barrett 2006; Moeschler 2009; Yus 2015). The abilities required in the production of irony have been less studied, especially compared to irony understanding in the developmental age (Filippova 2014). Some studies showed that a positive interaction of children with their parents and the use of irony in the family context favor both irony understanding and production (Pexman et al. 2009; Whalen-Pexman 2010). The empirical study we aim to present is part of a wider research project, based on a previous longitudinal study, which has been extended by further testing the (N=40) families who were enrolled in the research program. The longitudinal study aimed to investigate the relationship between parental Mind-mindedness (the ability to recognize the mental and intentional states of the child) and Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities in children from early-infancy to school-age. Mother-infant interactions during feeding (Chatoor et al. 1997) and play (Chatoor 2006) have proven to be important experiences in the development of children’s early social abilities (Stern 1995; Biringen 2000). The longitudinal study showed a stable relationship over time between the dyadic interactions and children’s social and communicative abilities also in extra-dyadic interactions. We generally expect that the quality of parental interactions influences not only social-communicative abilities in general but, more specifically, pragmatic abilities. Therefore, the project aims to investigate the pragmatic abilities of school-age children in relation to the development of their abilities of Theory of Mind (ToM) and parental Mind-mindedness. For the aims of this study, we expect that parental Mind-mindedness especially influences the pragmatic abilities that most involve an affective component (McHale 2007; Simonelli 2010), as in the case of irony. We expect that a more developed affective ability in a familiar context helps the child to distinguish whether the speaker’s intention is nice or mean (Mascaro-Sperber 2009; Wilson 2009; Sperber et al. 2010), especially in the case of sarcasm, that is directed toward a person, the “victim” of an ironic remark (Gibbs 1986; Giora 2003). The material was a set of 12 stories already validated (Banasik-Bokus 2019). Children were presented with 6 literal remarks and 6 ironic (3 ironic + 3 sarcastic) remarks at the end of the stories, and asked on a Likert scale whether they would have produced such a remark, whether it was nice or mean and it might hurt the listener. Preliminary results show that participants avoid producing remarks hurting the listener, especially when sarcastic. This correlates with ToM and parental Mind-mindedness abilities.