Processing of irony in text: A systematic review of eye tracking studies

Theoretical models of irony comprehension pose different hypotheses about the time-course of resolving ironic interpretation of an utterance, and propose several context-, phrase- and reader-related factors that influence the ease or difficulty of processing irony. In recent years, these factors have been examined using eye tracking, which allows a detailed analysis of time-course of reading processes. In this paper, we present a meta-analysis of the eye tracking studies on irony, and then present a systematic review of the factors that have been shown to influence the time-course of irony processing. The review will point to future directions in how eye tracking could best be applied to further develop the current theoretical views.