Comprehending irony via sentence-final particles by Chinese children with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

We examined the effects of sentence-final particles (SFPs) in comprehending different types of irony by Chinese-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). We tested 15 children with ASDs, along with another 15 typically developing (TD) children. In our test, by manipulating the use of the prototypical SFP /a/, participants were required to judge the speaker's attitude and real intention in ironic utterances of 16 stories and to further explain the language phenomenon. The results of a three-way analysis of variance showed a significant difference between the two groups: first, children with ASDs performed significantly worse than did their TD counterparts; second, while TD children relied more on SFPs to understand irony of compliment, children with ASDs only performed better with SFPs in comprehending irony of criticism. The differences are discussed in relation to theory of mind, the frequency of utterance, and rules of cognition.