Children’s Processing of Written Ironic Praise and Ironic Criticism: Evidence from Eye-Tracking Analyses

This study investigated how children aged 7 to 11 years process and comprehend written irony with different emotional valences (ironic praise vs. ironic criticism) using eye-tracking technology. Participants read short stories containing literal praise, literal criticism, ironic praise, or ironic criticism while their eye movements were recorded. Results indicated that children showed significantly lower comprehension accuracy for ironic praise compared to ironic criticism, supporting the affective asymmetry hypothesis in irony processing. Eye-tracking data provided partial support for this asymmetry: regression-path durations—but not first-pass or total reading times—were longer for ironic utterances, particularly ironic praise, indicating greater effort during integrative rereading and reanalysis. Age-related differences were limited to regression-path duration rather than comprehension accuracy, suggesting selective developmental differences in online integration. These findings provide process-level evidence for children’s written irony comprehension and highlight the role of online integrative processes in figurative language processing.