Comprehension of irony in Schizophrenia

It has been proposed that the disordered communicative ability, as well as other signs and symptoms, observed in schizophrenia can be at least partly attributed to an impaired ability to make inferences about the mental state of others, or theory of mind (Frith, 1992). This ability is necessary for the successful understanding of utterances in which the intended and literal meanings differ (e.g. metaphor and irony), in which the listener must go beyond the literal decoding of the spoken words to perceive the speaker's intended meaning and sentiments (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Comprehension of communicative intent in schizophrenia was investigated by comparing the performance of a group of chronic schizophrenics on a task assessing comprehension of irony with the performance of a psychiatric control group. As predicted, the schizophrenic group made more misinterpretations of ironic utterances as literal than the control group, who performed at ceiling levels. This difference could not be attributed to differences in current intellectual functioning between the schizophrenic and control groups. Within the schizophrenic group task performance