Schedule of Events | Symposia

Understanding sarcasm requires theory of mind after acute stroke

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Somya Mittal¹ (sm174@rice.edu), Margaret Blake², Tatiana Schnur¹; ¹University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, ²University of Houston

Right hemisphere (RH) stroke often leads to communication deficits, particularly in the comprehension of non-literal language such as sarcasm, which requires understanding a speaker’s intended meaning when it is in opposition to what was said. Previous research suggests that difficulties with non-literal language may stem from impairments in understanding another person’s perspective, known as Theory of Mind (ToM; Winner et al., 1998). However, the aspects of ToM, such as the ability to spontaneously use ToM (Other ToM) or manage conflict between self and other perspectives (Self ToM), and the ability to interpret nonverbal cues during emotion recognition have not been assessed in the same context. We addressed these gaps to investigate whether sarcasm comprehension deficits were associated with ToM impairments in patients before functional reorganization after brain injury occurred, during the acute phase of RH stroke. We administered a battery of tasks assessing ToM (Other and Self; Biervoye et al., 2018) and abilities to interpret sarcasm and nonverbal cues (McDonald et al., 2017) in 53 participants with acute RH stroke and 17 age- and education-matched controls. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that deficits in sarcasm comprehension following acute RH stroke were significantly linked to difficulties in understanding others' perspectives (Other ToM, p=0.03) independent of contributions from Self ToM, non-verbal cue processing, input processing, and age and education. These results demonstrate that ToM plays a critical role in non-literal language processing, contributing to a deeper understanding of social cognitive mechanisms that may help us understand other pragmatic language deficits in RH stroke.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Other