Context, Contrast, and Tone of Voice in Auditory Sarcasm Perception

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted to investigate the interplay between context and tone of voice in the perception of sarcasm. These experiments emphasized the role of contrast effects in sarcasm perception exclusively by means of auditory stimuli whereas most past research has relied on written material. In all experiments, a positive or negative computer-generated context spoken in a flat emotional tone was followed by a literally positive statement spoken in a sincere or sarcastic tone of voice. Participants indicated for each statement whether the intonation was sincere or sarcastic. In Experiment 1, a congruent context/tone of voice pairing (negative/sarcastic, positive/sincere) produced fast response times and proportions of sarcastic responses in the direction predicted by the tone of voice. Incongruent pairings produced mid-range proportions and slower response times. Experiment 2 introduced ambiguous contexts to determine whether a lower context/statements contrast would affect the proportion of sarcastic responses and response time. Results showed the expected findings for proportions (values between those obtained for congruent and incongruent pairings in the direction predicted by the tone of voice). However, response time failed to produce the predicted pattern, suggesting potential issues with the choice of stimuli. Experiments 3 and 4 extended the results of Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, to auditory stimuli based on written vignettes used in neuropsychological assessment. Results were exactly as predicted by contrast effects in both experiments. Taken together, the findings suggest that both context and tone influence how sarcasm is perceived while supporting the importance of contrast effects in sarcasm perception.

Using context and prosody in irony understanding: Variability amongst individuals

“…Our results pointed out the general impact of prosody in the subgroup named PROSODY+ compared to the subgroup named PROSODY-, meaning that the PROSODY+ subgroup judged the statements to be more ironic when uttered with an ironic prosody compared to statements spoken with a neutral prosody, specifically in the weak incongruity and no incongruity context conditions whereas this was not the case for the PROSODYsubgroup. The results obtained in the PROSODY+ subgroup were consistent with those in the second experiment of Voyer et al (2014). Thus, we confirm that ironic prosody can be a reliable cue for irony understanding (Cheang and Pell, 2008;Voyer et al, 2014;Peters et al, 2015).…”

“…Developing different experiments in English, Voyer et al (2014) found a strong interaction between context and prosody, concluding that prosody contributes to emphasizing the contrast effect in sarcasm perception. They manipulated the level of incongruity between the context and the speaker's utterance using three types of context (i.e., a positive context with no contextual incongruity leading to sincerity, a negative context with a strong contextual incongruity leading to sarcasm, an ambiguous context with a weak contextual incongruity) (Voyer et al, 2014). Their results revealed that the proportion of sarcastic responses in ambiguous contexts remained within the proportions obtained for congruent context-prosody pairs (e.g., negative context matched with sarcastic prosody and positive context matched with sincere prosody) and the incongruent pairs in the direction predicted by the prosody.…”

“…The absence of consensus amongst these studies could be explained by the use of different kinds of task (e.g., rating of prosodic cues in Woodland and Voyer (2011), discrimination task in Voyer et al (2014) and Deliens et al (2017), interpretation task in Deliens et al (2018) and Peters et al, (2015) with the presence or not of time limit to answer in these studies) and by the presence of individual differences regarding how people use prosody when understanding utterances. Bishop and colleagues (Bishop, 2012;Jun and Bishop, 2015) suggested that the use of prosodic information for sentence interpretation may differ across English-speaking listeners.…”

“…While the impact of contextual incongruity or prosody on understanding irony has led to a significant amount of research, the influence of the interplay between these markers on irony and sarcasm understanding have only recently been investigated in English (Woodland and Voyer, 2011;Voyer et al, 2014;Peters et al, 2015) and in French (Deliens et al, 2017;Deliens et al, 2018). Developing different experiments in English, Voyer et al (2014) found a strong interaction between context and prosody, concluding that prosody contributes to emphasizing the contrast effect in sarcasm perception. They manipulated the level of incongruity between the context and the speaker's utterance using three types of context (i.e., a positive context with no contextual incongruity leading to sincerity, a negative context with a strong contextual incongruity leading to sarcasm, an ambiguous context with a weak contextual incongruity) (Voyer et al, 2014).…”

“…To our knowledge, except the studies by colleagues (2017, 2018) there have been no studies in French among adults assessing the effect of both context and prosody on irony understanding. Unlike Deliens et al (2017Deliens et al ( , 2018, in the present study, we manipulated the degree of incongruity between context and speaker utterance as Voyer et al (2014)…”