Kyriacou Marianna, Rummelhoff Cecilie, Köder Franziska
University of Oslo, Norway.
J Atten Disord. 2025 Jul;29(9):724-744. doi: 10.1177/10870547251333819. Epub 2025 Apr 25.
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts pragmatic communication abilities in children, including their understanding of verbal irony. This study aims to investigate whether adults with ADHD experience similar challenges in interpreting ironic statements, and to examine the role of executive attention abilities in accounting for any observed differences.
52 adults with ADHD and 55 neurotypical controls participated in an eye-tracking experiment. They read stories that included either literal or ironic statements and answered targeted comprehension questions. We used measures of working memory and fluid intelligence as independent indices of executive attention.
The results showed that adults with ADHD were as accurate as the control group in comprehending irony. However, they experienced an additional processing cost, indicated by increased reading times for ironic statements. While fluid intelligence improved comprehension accuracy in the control group, it did not have the same effect for participants with ADHD. Importantly, higher working memory capacity in adults with ADHD was associated with faster processing times, making their irony processing comparable to that of the control group.
Our findings underscore the subtle challenges adults with ADHD face in processing irony and highlight the crucial role of working memory in enhancing performance. These insights stress the importance of considering individual cognitive capacities and their interaction with ADHD symptoms to better understand how ADHD impacts pragmatic abilities in adulthood.
注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）是一种神经发育障碍，会影响儿童的语用沟通能力，包括他们对言语反讽的理解。本研究旨在调查患有ADHD的成年人在解释反讽陈述时是否也面临类似挑战，并检验执行性注意力能力在解释任何观察到的差异中所起的作用。
52名患有ADHD的成年人和55名神经典型对照组参与了一项眼动追踪实验。他们阅读包含字面陈述或反讽陈述的故事，并回答针对性的理解问题。我们使用工作记忆和流体智力测量作为执行性注意力的独立指标。
结果表明，患有ADHD的成年人在理解反讽方面与对照组一样准确。然而，他们经历了额外的加工成本，这表现为反讽陈述的阅读时间增加。虽然流体智力提高了对照组的理解准确性，但对患有ADHD的参与者却没有同样的效果。重要的是，患有ADHD的成年人较高的工作记忆容量与更快的加工时间相关，使他们的反讽加工与对照组相当。
我们的研究结果强调了患有ADHD的成年人在处理反讽时面临的微妙挑战，并突出了工作记忆在提高表现方面的关键作用。这些见解强调了考虑个体认知能力及其与ADHD症状的相互作用对于更好地理解ADHD如何影响成年期语用能力的重要性。
