Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006 Sep;1(2):107-21. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsl018.
Understanding the intended meaning of a remark beyond what is explicitly stated is an integral part of successful social interactions. Here, we examined the neural circuitry underlying the interpretation of communicative intent in children and adults using irony comprehension as a test case. Participants viewed cartoon drawings while listening to short scenarios ending with a potentially ironic remark and were asked to decide whether the speaker was being sincere or ironic. In both children and adults, instructions to attend to the cues provided by the speaker's facial expression or tone of voice modulated the activity in visual and language cortices, respectively. Overall, children engaged the medial prefrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus more strongly than adults, whereas adults recruited the fusiform gyrus, extrastriate areas and the amygdala more strongly than children. Greater involvement of prefrontal regions in children may subserve the integration of multiple cues to reconcile the discrepancy between the literal and intended meaning of an ironic remark. This developmental shift from a reliance on frontal regions to posterior occipitotemporal regions may reflect the automatization of basic reasoning about mental states. This study is the first to examine developmental changes in the neural circuitry underlying natural language pragmatics.
理解话语的隐含意义是成功社交互动的重要组成部分。在这里，我们使用反讽理解作为测试案例，研究了儿童和成人在解释交际意图时的神经回路。参与者观看卡通画，同时听以可能具有反讽意味的话语结尾的简短场景，并被要求判断说话者是真诚的还是讽刺的。在儿童和成人中，关注说话者面部表情或语音提示的指令分别调节了视觉和语言皮层的活动。总体而言，儿童比成人更强烈地激活内侧前额叶皮层和左侧额下回，而成人比儿童更强烈地激活梭状回、外纹状区和杏仁核。儿童中前额叶区域的更多参与可能有助于整合多个提示，以协调反讽话语的字面意义和意图意义之间的差异。这种从依赖额叶区域到依赖后顶叶颞叶区域的发展转变可能反映了关于心理状态的基本推理的自动化。这项研究首次考察了自然语言语用学背后的神经回路的发展变化。
