The comprehension of ironic criticisms and ironic compliments in individuals with Down syndrome: Adding another piece to the puzzle

Comprehending irony is a complex task: typically developing (TD) children start recognizing what the speaker meant (typically the opposite of what was said) at approximately six years of age, with ironic criticisms (the more frequent form of irony) being understood earlier and better than ironic compliments. Irony comprehension has been linked to Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, which are in turn predicted by language competence, and with a possible role of social experiences to account for the asymmetry between criticisms and compliments. We tested irony comprehension in a group of 13 children and adolescents with Down syndrome (DS, mean age 13;6; range: 10;9–15;3) and compared their performance with a control group of younger TD children (mean age: 4;10; range: 3;2–6;6) matched for nonverbal mental age and measured their linguistic and ToM abilities. Individuals with DS have severely compromised linguistic skills but relatively strong social abilities. Our aim was twofold: we wanted to investigate higher level pragmatic abilities in DS, an area that is understudied, and to disentangle the contribution of linguistic, ToM and social factors for understanding irony. We found that individuals with DS reached the same level of irony comprehension as the TD control group and that they understood ironic criticisms much better than ironic compliments. For both groups, only linguistic abilities correlated with irony comprehension, with no influence of ToM. We discuss the implications of these results for future research on pragmatic abilities in DS, and for irony comprehension in general.