ORIGINAL PAPER Processing of Ironic Language in Children with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder Penny M. Pexman • Kristin R. Rostad • Carly A. McMorris • Emma A. Climie • Jacqueline Stowkowy • Melanie R. Glenwright Published online: 9 November 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract We examined processing of verbal irony in three groups of children: (1) 18 children with high-func- tioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD), (2) 18 typi- cally-developing children, matched to the first group for verbal ability, and (3) 18 typically-developing children matched to the first group for chronological age. We uti- lized an irony comprehension task that minimized verbal and pragmatic demands for participants. Results showed that children with HFASD were as accurate as typically- developing children in judging speaker intent for ironic criticisms, but group differences in judgment latencies, eye gaze, and humor evaluations suggested that children with HFASD applied a different processing strategy for irony comprehension; one that resulted in less accurate appreci- ation of the social functions of irony. Keywords Verbal irony Á High-functioning Autism spectrum disorder Á Language processing Á Eye gaze Á Figurative language Verbal irony is a form of figurative or nonliteral language by which a speaker can highlight a discrepancy between expectations and reality (Gibbs 1994). In ironic language, the speaker’s intended meaning is frequently different than the literal meaning of his or her words, as when a literally positive statement is used to make negative commentary (sarcasm or ironic criticism, e.g., ‘‘That was really grace- ful,’’ to someone who has just tripped on the sidewalk) or, less commonly, when a literally negative statement is used to make positive commentary (ironic compliment, e.g., ‘‘Rotten luck,’’ to someone who has just won the lottery). Verbal irony can be used to achieve a number of social and communicative goals, in particular, to convey an attitude indirectly and to be funny (Dews et al. 1996). Irony appreciation involves complex inferences about the speaker’s mind and requires attention to a number of social cues (Pexman 2008). By about age 5 or 6, typically- developing children begin to understand that an ironic speaker does not mean what he or she has literally said (i.e., the speaker intends something other than the literal meaning of his/her words) and they also begin to appreciate that the speaker intends to be funny, although this latter appreciation is usually slower to develop (Dews et al. 1996; Harris and Pexman 2003). Recent research has established that children’s ability to understand ironic intent is related to their ability to pass a second-order false belief task (a measure of advanced theory-of-mind understanding) and that children’s irony comprehension accuracy improves steadily through middle childhood (Filippova and Asting- ton 2008). In addition, children’s appreciation of ironic criticisms usually precedes appreciation of ironic compli- ments (Pexman and Glenwright 2007), likely because iro- nic compliments are less common than ironic criticisms. As such, irony appreciation reflects an advanced understanding of other minds and comprehension of P. M. Pexman (&) Á K. R. Rostad Á C. A. McMorris Á J. Stowkowy Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada e-mail: pexman@ucalgary.ca E. A. Climie Division of Applied Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada M. R. Glenwright Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada Present Address: C. A. McMorris Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada 123 J Autism Dev Disord (2011) 41:1097–1112 DOI 10.1007/s10803-010-1131-7