When is irony influenced by communicative constraints? ERP evidence supporting interactive models

• DOI: 10.1111/ejn.14503
• Publication Date: 2019-07-08T05:29:21Z
• Authors: Sendy Caffarra; Arman Motamed Haeri; Elissa Michell; Clara D. Martin
• Keywords: Stress; P600; Sentence processing; Sarcasm

Distinct theoretical proposals have described how communicative constraints (contextual biases, speaker identity) impact verbal irony processing. Modular models assume that social and contextual factors an effect at a late stage of Interactive claim biases are considered early on. The constraint-satisfaction model further assumes speaker's context's characteristics can compete stages analysis. present ERP study teased apart these by testing the context features (i.e., accent) on Spanish native speakers were presented with utterances ironic or literal. Each sentence was preceded negative positive context. story uttered in foreign accent. Results showed accent interacted as 150 ms during Greater N400-like effects reported for than literal sentences only contexts accent, possibly suggesting semantic difficulties when non-prototypical produced natives. A P600 also indicating inferential processing costs. results support suggest multiple sources information weighted interact from earliest