Children with mild autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to overlook social contextual and nonverbal cues in real-life social
interactions because of their psychological characteristics. They often rely solely on literal meaning to understand the intended
purpose of speech, resulting in the misinterpretation of nonliteral language used by others.
Irony is a nonliteral language commonly used in everyday communication. Difficulties in understanding ironic language
may affect how individuals socially communicate. Research into how individuals with mild ASD understand irony has yielded
inconsistent results. While many studies have suggested that individuals with mild ASD face difficulties in understanding ironic
language, some studies have indicated that they can both recognize and understand irony to a certain extent. Therefore, further
investigation of whether children with mild ASD understand ironic language is warranted.
Ironic language typically consists of verbal and nonverbal cues, with prosodic cues serving as key verbal cues for
understanding the intended message conveyed by others. These prosodic cues can be used to differentiate between ironic and
nonironic language. Few studies have examined whether children with mild ASD can utilize prosodic cues to understand ironic
language, and these studies have yielded inconsistent results. Therefore, further research is required to determine whether
children with mild ASD can better understand ironic language through prosodic cues.
To address the aforementioned gap in research, this study aimed to compare children with mild ASD and typically
developing children with respect to how well they understand the meaning of different types of ironic language with different
prosodic cues. Specifically, this study (1) compared the performance of children with mild ASD and typically developing
children in understanding the nonliteral meaning of ironic language; (2) determined whether prosodic cues influence children’s
understanding of the nonliteral meaning of ironic language; (3) compared the performance of children in understanding different
types of ironic language; (4) identified correlations of children’s disability status (mild ASD or typical development), prosodic
cues, and irony type with performance; and (5) identified the factors associated with understanding ironic language among
children.
A total of 40 children aged 8–12 years, including 20 children with mild ASD and 20 age-matched typically developing
controls, were examined. All children completed a self-developed task to measure their understanding of irony. They listened to
audio stimuli containing neutral prosodic cues and ironic prosodic cues, and their understanding of five distinct types of ironic
language (semantic inversion, hyperbole, understatement, meaning replacement, and praise) was evaluated. During formal
testing, two task versions were randomly presented, with 40 mixed stimuli presented on a computer screen as visual prompts.
The audio stimuli contained dialogue scenarios narrated by the researchers (e.g., “Xiaomei and Daxiong are taking a walk;Xiaomei walks very slowly. Daxiong says: …”). Ironic utterances (e.g., “Xiaomei, you walk so slowly,” corresponding to the
aforementioned scenario) were spoken by an adult or a student assuming the role of the character in the scenario, only in audio
form without simultaneous visual cues. After audio playback, comprehension questions (e.g., “What does Daxiong really mean
by this statement?”) and four answer options were presented on the following page to enable the children to form a judgment by
selecting the correct answer (1, 2, 3, or 4) on a keyboard. Finally, the percentage of correct answers was calculated to determine
the ability of each child to understand ironic language.
During the computer-based language comprehension task, the primary caregivers of the children completed the Taiwanese
version of the Children’s Communication Checklist—Second Edition (CCC-2) in a separate quiet room. This checklist was used
to evaluate the children’s communication ability across different dimensions and identify correlations between their performance
in understanding ironic language and their communication skills.
Mixed-design three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted with different groups (mild ASD group and typically
developing group), prosody versions (neutral prosody and ironic prosody), and irony types (semantic inversion, hyperbole,
understatement, meaning replacement, and praise) as the independent variables and the accuracy of irony understanding as
the dependent variable. Post hoc comparisons were conducted if the main effects were detected for each independent variable.
Simple main effects tests and post hoc comparisons were conducted if interactions were identified between the variables. To
analyze error types, a mixed-design three-way ANOVA was conducted with different groups, prosody versions, and error
types (literal meaning, related message, and interpretation) as the independent variables and the frequency of each error type
as the dependent variable. Post hoc comparisons were also conducted if the main effects were detected for each variable.
In addition, simple main effects tests and post hoc comparisons were conducted if interactions were detected between the
independent variables. Finally, Pearson’s product-moment correlations were used to examine the correlations of comprehension
performance with background variables (age, estimated intelligence quotient) and dimensions of communication ability (overall
communication composite score and subscale scores of the CCC-2).
Regardless of the presence of ironic prosody and the type of irony, children with mild ASD exhibited lower performance in understanding ironic language compared with typically developing children at a similar age and with similar intelligence
quotient levels. This finding is consistent with previous research indicating that children with mild ASD exhibit lower
performance in understanding irony compared with typically developing children. Further examination of the difficulties that
children face in understanding the nonliteral meaning of ironic utterances revealed that both typically developing children
and children with mild ASD tended to make the same error of interpreting ironic language depending on its literal meaning,
regardless of whether they were exposed to neutral prosody or ironic prosody. This finding is consistent with previous
research suggesting that individuals with ASD tend to rely solely on the literal meaning of language, which often results in
the misinterpretation and misinference of others’ intended messages. Rich prosodic cues improved the understanding of ironic
language for the two groups of children, indicating that prosody plays a key role in understanding ironic language and that
children with ASD can utilize prosodic cues to recognize and understand the intended meaning of ironic language.
In terms of irony type, the children exhibited higher performance in understanding hyperbole and meaning replacement
but lower performance in understanding semantic inversion, understatement, and praise. Prosodic cues enhanced their
understanding of semantic inversion, understatement, and praise but did not enhance their understanding of hyperbole and
meaning replacement. These findings indicate that children tend to rely on contextual cues rather than on prosodic ones to
understand the intended meaning of ironic language involving hyperbole and meaning replacement. By contrast, they tend
to rely on rich prosodic cues rather than on contextual ones to understand the intended meaning of ironic language involving
semantic inversion, understatement, and praise.
A further examination of the factors associated with the children’s understanding of ironic language revealed that
performance was correlated with overall communication ability, speech ability, grammatical ability, narrative cohesion ability,
pragmatic ability (e.g., topic initiation ability), stereotypical language identification ability, contextual ability, and nonverbal
communication ability. This finding not only indicates that understanding ironic language while listening to prosodic cues may
involve multiple dimensions of communication ability but also is consistent with the notion that linguistic ability is a highly
crucial predictor of nonliteral linguistic comprehension. Therefore, future research seeking to enhance children’s understanding of ironic language should target various aspects of communication ability.
In summary, prosodic cues play a key role in understanding irony among children because these cues influence how children with mild ASD and typically developing children understand different types of ironic language.
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Effect of Prosody on the Understanding of Irony in Nonliteral Language among Mildly Autistic and Typically Developing Children
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