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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access published online on September 12, 2006
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, doi:10.1093/scan/nsl018
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received March 17, 2006
Accepted July 26, 2006

Original Papers

Developmental changes in the neural basis of interpreting communicative intent

A. Ting Wang 1 *, Susan S. Lee 2, Marian Sigman 3, and Mirella Dapretto 4

1 Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
2 Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
3 Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
4 Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
A. Ting Wang, E-mail: ting.wang{at}mssm.edu


  Abstract

Understanding the intended meaning of a remark beyond what is explicitly stated is an integral part of successful social interactions. Here, we examined the neural circuitry underlying the interpretation of communicative intent in children and adults using irony comprehension as a test case. Participants viewed cartoon drawings while listening to short scenarios ending with a potentially ironic remark and were asked to decide whether the speaker was being sincere or ironic. In both children and adults, instructions to attend to the cues provided by the speaker's facial expression or tone of voice modulated the activity in visual and language cortices, respectively. Overall, children engaged the medial prefrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus more strongly than adults, whereas adults recruited the fusiform gyrus, extrastriate areas and the amygdala more strongly than children. Greater involvement of prefrontal regions in children may subserve the integration of multiple cues to reconcile the discrepancy between the literal and intended meaning of an ironic remark. This developmental shift from a reliance on frontal regions to posterior occipitotemporal regions may reflect the automatization of basic reasoning about mental states. This study is the first to examine developmental changes in the neural circuitry underlying natural language pragmatics.

Keywords: development; functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI); irony; language; theory of mind.

Present address: A. Ting Wang is currently with the Department of Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA.

Susan S. Lee is currently at the University of Rochester, School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York, USA.


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