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Irony understanding in right brain–damaged individuals: Impairment in decoding or integrating contextual information?

Maud Champagne-Lavau1*, Natacha Cordonier2, Anne Bellmann3 and Marion Fossard2
  • 1 Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL, France
  • 2 University of Neuchâtel, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, Institut des sciences du langage et de la communication, Switzerland
  • 3 CRR SuvaCare, Switzerland

Introduction It is well known that communication disorders affecting pragmatic abilities, particularly non-literal language processing (e.g. irony) frequently occur in people with a right-hemisphere lesion. However, most authors estimate the prevalence of such impairments in pragmatic abilities at 50%, highlighting that some individuals with right hemisphere brain-damage (RBD), but not others, present such disorders (Blake, Duffy, Myers & Tompkins, 2002; Champagne-Lavau & Joanette, 2009). Additionally, some literature suggests that RBD individuals seem to be impaired in their use of contextual information (e.g. information on the speaker, the situational context) when understanding irony or sarcasm (Martin & McDonald, 2003). The aim of the current research was to investigate whether all individuals with RBD show impairments in understanding irony and to explore whether such impairment is related to a reduced sensitivity to context (i.e. difficulty in capturing or detecting relevant contextual information) or to difficulties integrating contextual information (correctly detected). To this aim we used a paradigm which enables us to manipulate context according to the strength of incongruity between context and speaker utterance (Ivanko & Pexman, 2003). Method Twenty individuals with right-frontal brain damage (RBD) and twenty matched healthy control (HC) participants – all right handed and native French speakers – were tested individually on their understanding of a speaker’s ironic intent and their executive functions (inhibition, flexibility, working memory). Participants were asked to read 36 stimuli (12 stories x 3 context conditions intended to trigger either literal meaning (no incongruity) or ironic meaning (strong incongruity, weak incongruity) of the target sentence) and to answer a comprehension question on irony and a control question. Following results from Ivanko & Pexman (2003), RBD participants and HC participants were expected to be influenced in a different way by the level of incongruity between the context and the speaker’s utterance when understanding irony (cf. Champagne-Lavau, Cordonier, Bellmann & Fossard, 2018 for details). Results and discussion A hierarchical cluster analysis was performed according to RBD participants’ performances (i.e. percentage of correct interpretation of the speaker utterance in the three context conditions). This analysis led to a classification of the RBD individuals into two subgroups (RBD-U, RBD-I) enabling us to characterize different profiles among them. Non-parametric analyses conducted on the irony data to compare the performances obtained in the three context conditions (no incongruity, strong incongruity, weak incongruity) by each group (RBD-I, RBD-U, HC) revealed that 70% of the RBD participants (RBD-U group) performed as well as HC participants. By contrast, 30% of the RBD participants (RBD-I) exhibited impaired irony comprehension characterized by a reduced sensitivity to contextual information – whether the contextual incongruity was strong or weak (cf. Table 1). Thus, these RBD individuals processed the speaker’s utterance without any reference to contextual information, which led them to a literal interpretation of the utterance. Results from our study also suggested a potential account of time post-onset for the different patterns of performance in the population with RBD, with RBD-I participants having the shortest time post-onset.

References

Blake, M.L., Duffy, J.R., Myers, P.S., Tompkins, C.A. (2002) ‘Prevalence and patterns of right hemisphere cognitive/communicative deficits: retrospective data from an inpatient rehabilitation unit’, Aphasiology, 16(4), 537 47.
Champagne-Lavau, M., Cordonier, N., Bellmann, A., & Fossard, M. (2018). Context processing during irony comprehension in right-frontal brain-damaged individuals. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 1-18. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2018.1430851
Champagne-Lavau, M., & Joanette, Y. (2009). Pragmatics, theory of mind and executive functions after a right-hemisphere lesion: Different patterns of deficits. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 22(5), 413-426. doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2009.02.002
Ivanko, S. L., & Pexman, P. M. (2003). Context incongruity and irony processing. Discourse Processes, 35(3), 241-279.
Martin, I., & McDonald, S. (2003). Weak coherence, no theory of mind, or executive dysfunction? Solving the puzzle of pragmatic language disorders. Brain and Language, 85(3), 451-466.

Keywords: Individuals with right hemisphere brain-damage, pragmatics, irony, context processing, time post-onset

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018.

Presentation Type: poster presentation

Topic: not eligible for a student prize

Citation: Champagne-Lavau M, Cordonier N, Bellmann A and Fossard M (2019). Irony understanding in right brain–damaged individuals: Impairment in decoding or integrating contextual information?. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00054

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Received: 23 Apr 2018; Published Online: 22 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. Maud Champagne-Lavau, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL, Marseille, France, maud.champagne-lavau@univ-amu.fr