Examined young children's interpretations of the meanings of indirect speech acts (e.g. it's 10 o'clock) in paragraphs of a contextual type biasing a literal interpretation (time of day) or an extraliteral interpretation (time to prepare for bed). Memory for these meanings was also assessed. (Author/JMB)

Examines whether young children and adults are able to interpret sarcastic utterances and whether placements of contextual information before or after the utterance differentially affect interpretation. Results obtained from first and third graders and from college students indicated that different placements of contextual information do affect…