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Article In: Investigating Children’s Irony Comprehension: Current trends, challenges, and perspectives
Edited by Julia Fuchs-Kreiß
[Pragmatics & Cognition 33:1] 2026
► pp. 56–74

Training studies provide new insights about mechanisms of irony development

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oulu
ORCiD logo with link | Western University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
In verbal irony, there is a contrast between the literal meaning of what is stated and the intended meaning of the words. As successful comprehension of irony requires going beyond lexical meaning, the ability to understand it tends to develop late compared to literal language and it is challenging for children. Numerous explanations have been proposed for the late development of irony comprehension, including emerging language and perspective-taking skills, working memory, and metapragmatic knowledge. Irony training studies have the potential to be an effective means of testing these explanations and moving beyond correlational designs. We review recent studies that tested this possibility. The results suggest that even short-term irony training can be effective for improving children’s irony comprehension accuracy, and that metapragmatic knowledge is a key mechanism of irony understanding. We outline directions for future training studies and link those to possibilities for both intervention and theory development.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Irony comprehensision and its development
    • 1.2Factors affecting irony comprehension and its development
  • 2.Irony training studies
    • 2.1Training studies with typically developing children
    • 2.2Training studies with clinical populations
    • 2.3Training studies with L2 speakers
  • 3.Discussion
  • 4.Future directions
  • References
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