Teaching sarcasm: Evaluating metapragmatic training for typically-developing children

Sarcasm is a common form of social language but one that can be challenging for children to understand. We investigated whether training can enhance children’s ability to understand sarcasm. Participants were 111 five- to six- year-olds, assigned to either the training or control condition. In both conditions, children were first shown a series of puppet shows. Each puppet show ended with a sarcastic or literal remark. After each show children were asked about speaker belief, intent, and humour. Children’s responses were used to estimate their pre-training sarcasm understanding. In the training condition, children were taught what sarcasm was and what cues to look for as they interacted with the researcher over a set of stories where characters made either sarcastic or literal remarks. In the control condition children read a non-sarcastic storybook with the researcher. Children’s understanding of sarcasm was then re-assessed using another series of puppet shows. For children who were not already proficient in sarcasm understanding, training was associated with more accurate speaker belief and intent responses and more accurate sarcasm detection. Training was not related to children’s speaker humour responses. Thus, the findings of the present study provide evidence that aspects of children’s sarcasm understanding can be enhanced through training. The training paradigm could be developed further to test its effectiveness in other populations who struggle with sarcasm understanding, and to help refine theories of irony development.