Understanding Irony and Humor in Autism: The Contribution of Mentalizing and Empathy

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience difficulties understanding figurative language, including irony and humor. These challenges are typically attributed to impairments in mentalizing (Theory of Mind), yet the potential role of empathy in figurative language comprehension remains underexplored. The present study examined the contributions of mentalizing and empathy to the understanding of irony and humor in autistic and neurotypical (NT) children. A total of 109 children (58 autistic, 51 NT), aged 8–16 years, completed measures of mentalizing (Hinting Test), irony comprehension (comic strip task), humor comprehension, and empathy (Interpersonal Empathy Children’s Assessment). Group differences, correlations, hierarchical regressions, and moderation analyses were conducted.Autistic children showed significantly lower comprehension of both irony and humor compared to NT peers, despite similar performance on literal items. Mentalizing ability significantly predicted irony and humor comprehension across groups. Importantly, cognitive empathy was positively associated with irony and humor comprehension only among autistic children, and moderation analyses indicated that this association was stronger in the autistic group. Beyond its associative role, cognitive empathy may function as a compensatory mechanism in ASD, supporting the interpretation of nonliteral language when mentalizing processes are less efficient. This pattern suggests that figurative language comprehension in autism is not solely dependent on mentalizing ability, but may also rely on alternative social–cognitive pathways.