Institute of Phonetics, Faculty of Arts, Charles, University in Prague, Nám. J. Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague 1, CzechRepublic.
Child Dev. 2010 May-Jun;81(3):913-28. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01442.x.
To bridge the social-reasoning focus of developmental research on irony understanding and the pragmatic focus of research with adult populations, this cross-sectional study examines 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds' (n = 72) developing understanding of both social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony, when compared with adults (n = 24). Although 5-year-olds lag behind the other age groups in their reasoning about the speaker's meaning, belief, intention, and motivation, adults are consistently superior to children of all ages on these social-cognitive measures. In contrast, limited age-related differences were found in participants' judgment of the social-communicative function of irony (how nice, mean, and funny irony is). The findings help to reconcile previous discrepant claims as to the age when children come to understand irony.
为了弥合发展研究中关于反讽理解的社会推理焦点和成人研究的语用焦点之间的差距，本横断面研究比较了 5 岁、7 岁和 9 岁儿童（n=72）与成人（n=24）在理解话语反讽的社会认知和社会交际方面的发展情况。尽管 5 岁儿童在推理说话者的意思、信念、意图和动机方面落后于其他年龄组，但在这些社会认知测量方面，成年人始终优于所有年龄段的儿童。相比之下，在参与者对反讽的社会交际功能（反讽有多好、多刻薄和多有趣）的判断方面，发现年龄相关的差异有限。这些发现有助于调和以前关于儿童理解反讽的年龄的不一致说法。
