Training studies provide new insights about mechanisms of irony development

In verbal irony there is a contrast between the literal meaning of what is stated and the intended meaning of the words. As successful comprehension of irony requires going beyond lexical meaning, the ability to understand it tends to develop late compared to literal language and it is challenging for children. Numerous explanations have been proposed for the late development of irony comprehension, including emerging language and perspective taking skills, working memory, and metapragmatic knowledge. Irony training studies have the potential to be an effective means of testing these explanations and moving beyond correlational designs. We review recent studies that tested this possibility, conducted in several countries, including Hungary, Canada, and Finland. The results suggest that even short-term irony training can be effective for improving children’s irony comprehension accuracy, and that metapragmatic knowledge is a key mechanism of irony understanding. We outline directions for future training studies and link those to possibilities for both intervention and theory development.