Roles of the Sentence-final Particles in Cognition of Irony ——Based on the Test of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have some shortcomings in the understanding of irony. It’s mainly from the prosody, a kind of language cue, to study the understanding of irony. However, Chinese-speaking children with ASD are less capable of using prosodic cues for irony comprehension, and sentence-final particles (SFPs) may be used for this pragmatic function. This study used three measurement indicators (the attitude, intention and language explanation) to examine the effects of the SFPs on the comprehension of different types of irony between the High-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) and the Typical Development (TD) children group. The study found there was a significant difference on the irony comprehension between two groups. Language cues SFPs can only play a role in the irony which HFASD children can make the understanding and judgment by. And for TD children, the SFP made a significant effect on the irony of compliment. It shows that two groups used different treatment strategies to understand the irony. The differences were discussed by the theory of mind, the frequency of utterance and the rule of cognition.