Attitude understanding and irony development

Abstract A distinctive feature of verbal irony is the expression of a dissociative attitude. Although attitude understanding represents a key element of irony comprehension and its development, the experimental research in this area remains fragmented and often yields mixed findings. This paper reviews the measures employed to target distinct aspects of irony understanding, including attitude recognition, and examines inconsistencies in their application. Furthermore, it explores how features of experimental stimuli — including contextual, verbal, and paraverbal cues — can affect children’s performance. Our analysis lays the foundation for refining the conceptualisation of the dissociation expressed by the ironical attitude and overcoming methodological challenges such as ensuring consistency in the design of measures and their alignment with experimental stimuli. Adopting a more rigorous and integrative approach has the potential to illuminate the developmental trajectory of ironical attitude comprehension and support the establishment of more systematic and reliable research in this domain.