Ironic, isn't it!? A review on irony comprehension in children and adolescents with ASD

There is a widespread assumption that children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have more difficulty understanding ironic utterances than their typically developing (TD) peers do. This supposed deficit is often explained by impairments in the former’s Theory of Mind skills. The present review article examines the validity of this hypothesis, on the basis of existing empirical studies. A systematic literature search of three relevant databases revealed 14 studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria (peer-reviewed studies written in English, focusing on the comprehension of verbal irony in children and adolescents with ASD, in comparison to TD controls using behavioural data. They must report irony comprehension results separately, and directly involve the participants in the experiments, and the participants must be without intellectual disability, without severe visual impairments, and with verbal abilities). Care was taken to include in the review only those studies whose participants could be distinguished solely in the characteristic “ASD versus TD”. The findings are inconclusive: some studies found (significant) group differences, others did not, regardless of the irony comprehension tasks used and the matching strategies applied. Regarding the irony comprehension components investigated, children with ASD performed as well as TD children in understanding speaker belief in ironic criticism and speaker attitude in ironic criticism and ironic compliment. The assumption that children and adolescents with ASD have more difficulty understanding irony than TD peers cannot be conclusively or indisputably confirmed. Further research is needed. Specific recommendations are made for future studies. It is noted that irony training sessions seem to boost irony comprehension. Preliminary approaches to such training exist, but further development and broader implementation are needed.