Recognizing that what someone says is not always what they truly think or feel is a key social skill, and understanding irony reflects this ability. Around age seven, children begin to interpret ironic messages similarly to adults. Irony comprehension is not uniform: ironic criticism tends to be easier to grasp than ironic praise. Ironic statements might also differ in the way they are delivered to a child, e.g., via indirect speech in stories or in a natural communicative context. However, it remains unknown whether a child's context-based, natural engagement with an ironic message might enhance their understanding of irony; thus, the aim of this study was to examine that.
We analyzed the performance of 182 children (girls, n = 88) aged seven years, who responded to questions about standardly used illustrated stories (two depicting praise and two depicting criticism), presented in a counterbalanced order. At the end of each session, children participated in quasi-natural interactions in which the experimenters acted out a scene in which one experimenter ironically criticized or praised the behavior of the other. The tone of the message was manipulated: half of the children heard a neutral tone, and the others an ironic tone.
Consistent with previous research, children were better at recognizing ironic criticism than praise in both tasks. They also performed slightly better at understanding irony in the interactive than in the story-based tasks. Moreover, while the tone of speaking did not improve comprehension of ironic criticism, it facilitated understanding of ironic praise.
To conclude, 7-year-olds find ironic praise more difficult to detect than criticism. A context-based task is likely to enhance understanding of ironic messages, and the ironic tone facilitates comprehension of ironic praise. Our results suggest that children's social skills, such as interpreting irony, may be fostered through natural context experiences.