Hodgins Vegas, Tiv Mehrgol, El Mouslih Chaimaa, Tarín Karla, Mansuri Naima, Iniesta Antonio, Titone Debra
Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001, McGill College, Montréal, Québec, H3 A HG1, Canada.
US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2025 Apr 30. doi: 10.3758/s13421-025-01722-z.
Ironic utterances (i.e., when people intend the opposite of what they say) are often more difficult to understand than literal utterances during natural reading (reviewed in Olkoniemi & Kaakinen, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75, 99-106, 2021). Moreover, ironic compliments ("Good job!" spoken upon a failure) tend to be even more challenging compared to ironic criticisms ("Terrible job!" spoken upon a success) (Pexman & Olineck, Discourse Processes, 33, 199-217, 2002). Relevant here, understanding irony is thought to require mentalizing capacity, which may be impacted by bilingual language experience (Tiv et al., Memory & Cognition, 51, 253-272, 2023) and differ for first and second language reading (L1 and L2, respectively). In this study, bilingual adults read sentences containing ironic compliments, criticisms, and matched literal statements in both their L1 and their L2 (blocked and counterbalanced), enabling a rigorous within-participant evaluation of L1 versus L2 irony processing. Linear mixed-effects modelling demonstrated the increased difficulty of ironic compliments during reading but indicated no group-level, within-participant L1 versus L2 irony differences. However, a significant effect of bilingual language experience emerged, in that individual differences in how readers distribute use of their L1 and L2 (i.e., language entropy) patterned with faster go-past times for ironic sentences during L1 reading. These findings cohere with the idea that bilingual language experience may relate to mentalizing processes that underlie irony resolution (e.g., Tiv et al., Memory & Cognition, 51, 253-272, 2023).
反讽话语（即人们所言与所指相反时）在自然阅读过程中往往比字面话语更难理解（见奥尔科涅米和卡伊基宁的综述，《加拿大实验心理学杂志》，2021年，第75卷，第99 - 106页）。此外，与反讽批评（在成功时说“干得糟透了！”）相比，反讽赞美（在失败时说“干得好！”）往往更具挑战性（佩克斯曼和奥林内克，《话语过程》，2002年，第33卷，第199 - 217页）。在此相关的是，理解反讽被认为需要心理化能力，这可能会受到双语语言经验的影响（蒂夫等人，《记忆与认知》，2023年，第51卷，第253 - 272页），并且在第一语言和第二语言阅读（分别为L1和L2）中有所不同。在本研究中, 双语成年人阅读包含反讽赞美、批评以及与其匹配的字面陈述的句子，这些句子分别用他们的第一语言和第二语言呈现（分块并进行平衡处理），从而能够对第一语言与第二语言的反讽处理进行严格的个体内评估。线性混合效应模型表明阅读过程中反讽赞美的难度增加，但未显示出组水平上、个体内第一语言与第二语言在反讽处理上的差异。然而，出现了双语语言经验的显著影响，即读者在第一语言和第二语言使用分配上的个体差异（即语言熵）与第一语言阅读中反讽句子更快的越过时间模式相关。这些发现与双语语言经验可能与反讽解决背后的心理化过程有关的观点相一致（例如，蒂夫等人，《记忆与认知》，2023年，第51卷，第253 - 272页）。
