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International audience; The aim of the present study was to explore neuronal oscillatory activity during a task of irony understanding. In this task, we manipulated implicit information about the speaker such as occupation stereotypes (i.e., sarcastic versus non-sarcastic). These stereotypes are social knowledge that influence the extent to which the speaker's ironic intent is understood. Time-frequency analyses revealed an early effect of speaker occupation stereotypes, as evidenced by greater synchronization in the upper gamma band (in the 150-250 ms time window) when the speaker had a sarcastic occupation, by a greater desynchronization for ironic context compared to literal context in the alpha1 band and by a greater synchronization in the theta band when the speaker had a non-sarcastic occupation. When the speaker occupation did not constrain the ironic interpretation, the interpretation of the sentence as ironic was revealed as resource-demanding and requiring pragmatic reanalysis, as shown mainly by the synchronization in the theta band and the desynchronization in the alpha1 band (in the 500-800 ms time window). These results support predictions of the constraint satisfaction model suggesting that during irony understanding, extralinguistic information such as information on the speaker is used as soon as it is available, in the early stage of processing.

International audience; IntroductionNon-literal language comprehension disorders are an integral part of the cognitive-communicative phenotype of individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI). Unfortunately, indirect requests have received relatively little attention among the various forms of non-literal language. However, unconventional indirect requests (or hints) are interesting speech acts to analyse. Indeed, several studies tend to show difficulties in understanding hints in ABI individuals (e.g., Champagne-Lavau & Joanette, 2009; Evans & Hux, 2011; Hatta, Hasegawa, & Wanner, 2004), although these results are not unanimous (McDonald, 2000; McDonald, Fisher, & Flanagan, 2016). Moreover, the fact that hints are coded in the mental lexicon under their literal meaning (Giora, 2002) suggests that an analysis of the context and additional inferential processes are necessary for their understanding. Some studies have thus focused on the cognitive processes involved in hints understanding - particularly the role of the theory of mind (ToM) and executive functions. However, again, the results are not consensual (Champagne-Lavau & Joanette, 2009; Muller et al., 2010).Several factors may explain these contradictions. First, the heterogeneity of ABI individuals and the nature of pragmatic errors are rarely taken into account in the analyses performed (Côté, Payer, Giroux, & Joanette, 2007). The results, therefore, do not make it possible to account for the diversity and fine nuances of the pragmatic disorders. Second, the measures are very heterogeneous, particularly in terms of cognitive load (Blake, 2017).To address these limitations, our study aimed to identify cognitive-pragmatic profiles in ABI individuals through a novel hint comprehension task manipulating cognitive mechanisms and processes of interest (i.e., context analysis, ToM, and executive function) (Cordonier, Champagne-Lavau, & Fossard, 2021).Methods We recruited 33 ABI participants from hospitals and clinical centres in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. They were between 20 and 65 years old, right-handed, and native French speakers. They had brain lesions consecutive to stroke in the right hemisphere or a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury occurring within at least six months. Thirty-three healthy controls (HC) were individually matched with the ABI participants for age and education level. We administered the ABI and HC participants neuropsychological tests assessing ToM (Faux-pas test, Mini-SEA, Bertoux, 2014) and executive functions (Hayling Test, Rouleau, 1998; verbal fluency task, Macoir et al., 2017 and Nasreddine et al., 2005; forward and backward digit spans (WAIS-III); reading span test, Desmette et al., 1995), as well as a hint comprehension task. This task included 36 written stories, which varied in terms of interpretation (literal vs hint), executive demand (low vs high), and contextual cues facilitating understanding of the hints (i.e., a hierarchical relationship between interlocutors; with vs without). In order to take into account performance heterogeneity, the k-means clustering method was performed to group ABI participants with similar pragmatic performance on the hint comprehension task. The silhouette and the gap statistic methods were used to determine the optimal number of clusters. Welch’s ANOVA and Welch’s t-tests for independent samples were then used to compare the performance of each ABI-subgroup to the group of HC on the pragmatic task and the neuropsychological tests. The p-values were adjusted with the False Discovery Rate method using the Benjamini - Hochberg procedureResults The silhouette and the gap statistic methods suggested that the optimal number of clusters is two. Therefore, these two subgroups were named a posteriori according to the problematic condition(s) evidenced in the statistical analyses: ABI-U (Unimpaired) and ABI-H (impaired in all the Hint conditions).One-way Welch ANOVAs and Post-hoc Welch’s t-tests revealed that the ABI-U subgroup performed similarly to HC participants in the hint comprehension task (see table 1). On the neuropsychological level, they had worse performance than the HC group on inhibition (Hayling inhibition: t(21.168) = -3.788, p

Laughter performs multiple pragmatic functions in conversation (Glenn et Holt, 2013). It is often used to show enjoyment of pleasant incongruities (c.a. humour), to smooth dialogue acts having a potential negative effect on the ideal flow of a conversation (e.g. disagreement,asking a favour), or to show pleasant appraisals (e.g., accompanying a compliment) (Mazzocconi et al. 2020). Furthermore, laughter can be a cue of non-literal intentions (Hoicka and Gattis, 2008) signalling incongruities between what is said and what is meant (e.g. irony or scare quoting; Schaffer 1982; Haiman, 1998; Ginzburg et al., 2020), marking non-serious or negative speaker’s attitudes (Attardo et al., 2003; Utsumi, 2000). Bryant (2016) extracted ironic utterances from natural friendly conversations and presented them out of context, with or without the adjacent laughter. The presence of laughter increased listeners’ judgements of non-literal speaker’s meaning. However, we still don’t knowwhether laughter cues ironic interpretation of sentences when embedded in context. Contextual incongruity in relation to the target sentence has been consistently identified as the most important factor for ironic interpretation (Ivanko and Pexman, 2003; Champagne-Lavau et al., 2012; Riviere et al. 2018). Burgers et al.'s (2012) results show, in line with Utsumi’s (2000) model, that the co-presence of multiple cues reduces the complexity of irony processing. Deliens et al. (2018) demonstrates that the presence of other multi-modal markers of irony, such as prosody or facial expressions, can outweigh the presence of more reliable contextual cues, in the interest of faster, yet less accurate, responses.We hypothesized that laughter would lead towards ironic responses, especially when contextual cues are not very strong (i.e. weak incongruity with the target sentence). Furthermore, laughter will facilitate processing and induce faster reaction times in the case of strong incongruity, as in this case it will be a redundant cue for irony interpretation

Disorders of the understanding of non-literal language (i.e., irony and indirect requests) arefrequently reported after right hemisphere damages (RHD) or traumatic brain injuries (TBI).However, the cognitive mechanisms that may underlie these disorders - context processing,executive functions, and theory of mind - remain controversial, mainly because of thecharacteristic heterogeneity of these populations. Additionally, the communicativeinadequacy resulting from a poor understanding of non-literal language can impact affectedindividuals’ social and professional lives, making the diagnosis and treatment of thesedisorders paramount. At present, however, the assessment tools and therapy of thesedisorders remain scarce.Therefore, the objectives of this thesis were threefold. The first objective was to identifycognitive-pragmatic profiles in RHD and TBI individuals. The use of cluster analyses and twotasks of understanding irony and indirect requests, manipulating the underlying cognitiveprocesses within them, allowed objectifying the presence of four pragmatic profiles associatedwith various cognitive impairments. The second objective consisted of validating andstandardizing the two tasks mentioned above. The results showed that these tasks had goodpsychometric qualities and a significant differential diagnostic potential. The third objectivewas to develop a therapy for irony and indirect requests comprehension disorders based onempirical results identified in narrative and systematic reviews. This new therapy has beensuccessfully administered to a TBI participant. The full results shed new light on currentknowledge and have important methodological and clinical implications., Les troubles de compréhension du langage non littéral (par exemple, l’ironie et les requêtesindirectes) sont fréquemment rapportés chez les individus cérébrolésés droits (CLD) ettraumatisés crânio-cérébraux (TCC). Les mécanismes cognitifs pouvant sous-tendre cestroubles – le traitement du contexte, les fonctions exécutives et la théorie de l'esprit – restenttoutefois sujets à controverse, en raison notamment de l’hétérogénéité caractéristique de cespopulations. De plus, l’inadéquation communicative résultant d’une mauvaise compréhensiondu langage non littéral peut impacter la vie sociale et professionnelle des individus affectés,rendant le diagnostic et le traitement de ces troubles primordiaux. À l’heure actuelle, les outilsd’évaluation et les prises en charge de ces déficits restent pourtant lacunaires.Dès lors, les objectifs de la présente thèse étaient triples. Un premier objectif visait àidentifier des profils cognitivo-pragmatiques chez des individus CLD et TCC. Le recours à desanalyses en cluster et l’utilisation de deux tâches de compréhension de l’ironie et des requêtesindirectes, manipulant en leur sein les mécanismes sous-jacents, ont permis d’objectiver laprésence de quatre profils pragmatiques associés à des atteintes cognitives variées. Le secondobjectif consistait à valider et normer les deux tâches précitées. Les résultats ont démontréque ces tâches présentaient de bonnes qualités psychométriques et un potentiel diagnosticdifférentiel important. Le troisième objectif visait à élaborer une prise en charge des troublesde compréhension de l’ironie et des requêtes indirectes sur la base des résultats d’étudesrecensées dans deux revues narrative et systématique de littérature. Cette nouvelle thérapiea été administrée avec succès auprès d’un individu TCC. L’ensemble des résultats apporte unnouvel éclairage aux connaissances actuelles et a des implications méthodologiques etcliniques importantes.

Laughter is informative about mental states and able to affect the meaning of our utterances. We propose to investigate for the first time the interaction of laughter and contextual incongruity in the attribution of ironic intentions to speakers. Our study will have implication for the refining of the Constraint Satisfaction Model of irony processing (Campbell and Katz, 2012) and highlighting the importance of laughter in semantic and pragmatic processing.

Irony is a common linguistic phenomenon that occurs in everyday interactions. However, by its indirect nature, it carries the risk of miscommunication. When we talk about irony, we have the tendency to think of ironic criticisms who are more frequent, and most of the time easier to understand (i.e., asymmetry of irony). Nevertheless, there is another form of ironic utterances: ironic praises. In different models of irony understanding, factors have been proposed as playing a role in understanding ironic criticism and praises. Several models of irony processing have also been highlighted, including the Constraints Satisfaction model. According to this model, different types of factors (i.e., constraints) are integrated rapidly and in parallel in order to construct an interpretation that better fits the available information than an alternative interpretation would have done.The objective of this thesis was, using the framework of the Constraints Satisfaction model, to determine, for the first time in French, the role played by several types of constraints (i.e., pragmatic, linguistic and sociocultural) in the understanding of ironic criticisms and ironic praises.The results of a first experiment, in which we used a listening task, showed that the incongruity between the context and the utterance was a stronger cue than prosody in the understanding of ironic critics. Indeed, we showed that while all participants, in their interpretations, relied on contextual information, only some participants also used prosodic cues. The results of the two subsequent experiments, consisting of written tasks, confirmed the main role played by pragmatic constraints in irony understanding, and particularly in understanding of ironic criticisms. Our results also highlighted the contribution, while at a lower level than pragmatic constraints, of sociocultural constraints of the participants in the irony understanding. Our results also confirmed the asymmetry of irony and showed that the pragmatic constraints contributing to the understanding of ironic praises would be different from those contributing to the understanding of ironic criticism., L’ironie est un phénomène linguistique particulièrement présent dans nos interactions. Pourtant, de par sa nature indirecte, elle comporte des risques d’incompréhension. Quand nous parlons d’ironie, nous avons tendance à penser aux critiques ironiques qui sont plus fréquentes, et souvent plus faciles à comprendre (i.e., asymétrie de l’ironie). Néanmoins, il est aussi possible de rencontrer des compliments ironiques. Dans différents modèles de compréhension de l’ironie, des facteurs ont été proposés comme jouant un rôle dans la compréhension des critiques et des compliments ironiques. Plusieurs modèles de traitement de l’ironie ont également été mis en évidence, parmi lesquels le modèle de Satisfaction de Contraintes. Ce modèle envisage la compréhension de l’ironie comme l’intégration rapide et en parallèle de différents types de facteurs (i.e., contraintes), permettant de construire une interprétation cohérente, qui correspondrait mieux aux informations disponibles qu’une interprétation alternative.Ce travail de thèse a eu pour vocation, en utilisant le cadre du modèle de Satisfaction de Contraintes, de déterminer, pour la première fois en français, le rôle joué par plusieurs types de contraintes (i.e., pragmatiques, linguistiques et socioculturelles) dans la compréhension des critiques et des compliments ironiques.Suite à une première étude dans laquelle nous avons utilisé une tâche auditive, nos résultats ont mis en évidence que l’incongruité entre le contexte et l’énoncé était un indice plus fort que la prosodie lors de la compréhension de critiques ironiques. En effet, nous avons montré que si tous les participants, lors de l’interprétation, s’appuyaient sur les informations contextuelles, seuls certains participants utilisaient également les indices prosodiques. Les résultats des deux études suivantes, composées de tâches écrites, ont confirmé le rôle majeur des contraintes pragmatiques (i.e., allusion à une attente déçue, tension négative et présence d’une victime) dans la compréhension de l’ironie, et notamment dans la compréhension des critiques ironiques. Nos résultats ont également mis en évidence la contribution, bien qu’à un niveau inférieur à celle des contraintes pragmatiques, de contraintes socioculturelles des participants dans la compréhension de l’ironie. Ils ont aussi confirmé l’asymétrie de l’ironie et montré que les contraintes pragmatiques contribuant à la compréhension des compliments ironiques seraient différentes de celles contribuant à la compréhension des critiques ironiques.

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Social cognition represents our ability to attribute mental states (intentions,knowledge, beliefs and desires) to others (theory of mind) and to identify his/heremotions. This ability is an important component of our social interactions as it helps usreading others’ behavior and speech, so we can adapt our own reactions accordingly.These social cognition abilities are often impaired in various pathologies, includingtraumatic brain injury (TBI), and it is also known that TBI people often experiencedisruptions in their social interactions. Despite this finding, social cognition is neverassessed in social interactions in TBI, but is rather assessed through traditionalexperimental tasks, with a « pen-and-paper » or a video format, for which theparticipant has to infer mental states and emotions of characters depicted in writtenstories, comic-strips or videos. Thus, this type of evaluation involves a mindful anddeliberate reasoning, since it requires answering explicit questions about the characters.On the contrary, a growing number of researchers argue that assessing social cognitionin communication situations would involve more implicit, unaware and automaticprocesses.The goal of this study was to assess social cognition using paradigms that activelyinvolve the participant in a social interaction, which has never been done in TBI, and tocompare the results obtained on this type of tests with those obtained on traditionaltasks with a « pen-and-paper » format. To this aim, we administered to TBI and controlparticipants two social cognition tasks including the participant in a conversationsituation: a referential communication task, which is a collaborative game with anexperimenter, and a novel task (named EViCog) involving the participants in audiovisualconversations on topics of everyday-life with virtual humans who expressemotions and produce speech content that requires mental states inferences (such asattribution of an ironic intent and attribution of knowledge / desires). Three socialcognition tasks widely used in the literature that do not include the participant in aninteraction were also administered: the Ekman & Friesen’s emotion recognition test (1976), the Character Intention Task (Sarfati et al., 1997) (comic-strips), and a task ofirony understanding (written texts) (Champagne-Lavau et al., 2012). Finally, the aim ofthis study was also to investigate the cognitive processes (mnemonic and executive)involved in social cognition in TBI, and more specifically, to determine if the cognitivemechanisms involved vary according to the type of task, i.e. whether the participant isincluded in the interaction or not.Results showed that TBI participants were more impaired than the control groupon all the social cognition tasks, except the referential communication task. Theassessment of social cognition using the EViCog task has shown that mentalizing andemotion recognition impairments of TBI people were even more noticeable in aconversation situation compared to the classic « pen-and-paper » format. Finally, socialcognition performance assessed in a situation communication seem to rely onmnemonic abilities, such as autobiographical memory and context memory, and onexecutive functioning, especially working memory and access processes. On thecontrary, emotion recognition and theory of mind abilities assessed throughconventional tasks would not be explained by mnemonic abilities, but only by certainexecutive functions such as access to mental lexicon and flexibility., La cognition sociale, c’est-à-dire notre capacité à attribuer des états mentaux(intention, connaissances, croyances, désirs…) { autrui (théorie de l’esprit) et { identifierses émotions, est une composante fondamentale de nos interactions sociales, dans lamesure où elle nous permet d’interpréter le comportement et le discours d’autrui, etd’ajuster nos propres réactions en conséquence. Ces habiletés de cognition sociale fontdéfaut dans de nombreuses pathologies, incluant le traumatisme crânien (TC), lespersonnes atteintes expérimentant par ailleurs souvent des perturbations importantesde leurs relations sociales. En dépit de ce constat, la cognition sociale n’est jamaisévaluée en situation d’interaction sociale au sein de cette population, mais plutôt { l’aidede tâches expérimentales traditionnelles, sous format « papier-crayon » ou vidéo, pourlesquelles la personne doit inférer les états mentaux ou les émotions de personnagesprésentés dans des histoires écrites, des bandes-dessinées ou encore des vidéos. Ainsi,ce mode d’évaluation fait intervenir un raisonnement conscient et délibéré, puisqu’ils’agit de répondre { des questions explicites sur les états mentaux des personnages. Aucontraire, de plus en plus de chercheurs suggèrent qu’évaluer la cognition sociale ensituation d’interaction mettrait en jeu des processus complètement différents, plusimplicites, inconscients et automatiques.Ce travail de thèse a donc pour vocation d’évaluer la cognition sociale enimpliquant activement le participant dans une situation de communication, ce qui n’ajamais été fait dans le traumatisme crânien, et de comparer les performances obtenuessur ce type d’épreuves avec celles obtenues sur des tâches traditionnelles sous format« papier-crayon ». Pour cela, nous avons administré aux participants TC et contrôles decette étude deux tâches d’évaluation de la cognition sociale impliquant le participantdans une situation d’interaction : une tâche de communication référentielle sous laforme d’un jeu collaboratif avec l’expérimentateur, et une tâche novatrice appeléeEViCog (Evaluation de la cognition sociale en interaction virtuelle) permettant auparticipant d’avoir des conversations audio-visuelles sur des thèmes de la vie courante 4avec des humains virtuels, qui expriment des émotions et produisent du discoursnécessitant d’inférer leurs états mentaux (attribution d’une intention ironique etattribution de connaissances/désirs). Trois tâches de cognition sociale largementutilisées dans la littérature pour lesquelles le participant n’est pas inclus dansl’interaction ont également été administrées : la tâche de reconnaissance des émotionsfaciales d’Ekman & Friesen (1976), la Character Intention Task (Sarfati et al., 1997)(inférence des intentions de personnages dans des bandes-dessinées), et une tâched’attribution d’intention ironique sous forme de textes écrits (Champagne-Lavau et al.,2012). Enfin, l’objectif de ce travail était également d’étudier les processus cognitifs(mnésiques et exécutifs) impliqués dans la cognition sociale chez les personnes ayant euun traumatisme crânien, et plus spécifiquement de déterminer si les mécanismescognitifs varient en fonction du type de tâche, c’est-à-dire selon que le participant estinclus ou non dans l’interaction.Les résultats ont montré que les participants TC avaient plus de difficultés decognition sociale que les contrôles pour toutes les tâches administrées, { l’exception dela tâche de communication référentielle. L’évaluation de la cognition sociale { l’aide de latâche EViCog a permis de montrer que les difficultés de TdE et de reconnaissanceémotionnelle des personnes TC étaient mises en évidence de manière encore plusimportante en situation de conversation par rapport au format classique « papiercrayon». Enfin, les performances de cognition sociale évaluées en situation d’interactionsemblent dépendre en partie des capacités mnésiques, telles que la mémoireautobiographique et la mémoire du contexte, ainsi que des fonctions exécutives,notamment la mémoire de travail et l’accès au lexique mental. Les performances dereconnaissance des émotions et de TdE évaluées { l’aide de tâches classiques ne seraientquant à elles pas expliquées par les capacités mnésiques, mais uniquement par certainescapacités exécutives telles que l’accès au lexique mental et la flexibilité.

International audience; According to [1] speakers use intonation to specify a relationship between the content of a phrase and the mutual knowledge/belief of participants in the current discourse about this content. For instance, in American English, the L+H* pitch accent is used by speakers to mark a correction or a contrast. In this case, by using this pitch accent, the speaker signals that the accented item and not some alternative related item should be mutually believed, all the alternatives being shared by both the speaker and the addressee. This framework thus assumes that the speaker's prosodic encoding of contrast depends i) on the referential context itself and ii) on what the speaker and the addressee know about this context. Following this idea, lots of research has focused on the description of the prosodic forms involved in contrast encoding in different languages. However, most studies have not investigated to what extent the prosody of contrast reflects the way speakers take their addressees into account. Do prosodic choices of speakers mainly reflect the referential context from the speaker's point of view independently of his/her addressee's presence and knowledge or does the speaker prosodically encode contrast on the basis of shared knowledge to serve the addressee's needs?

International audience

International audience; Alors que de nombreuses recherches ont clairement mis en évidence des troubles de la théorie de l’esprit (ToM) dans la schizophrénie (Brüne, 2005) très peu d’études ont évalué ces difficultés en situation d’interaction (McCabe et al., 2004 ; Champagne-Lavau et al., 2009 ; Michelas et al., 2014). Pourtant, si l’attribution d’états mentaux aux autres (ToM) est le plus souvent implicite, rapide et spontanée dans nos interactions quotidiennes, les tâches classiques utilisées pour évaluer cette capacité dans la schizophrénie mettent surtout en jeu des processus lents et coûteux cognitivement.L’objectif de la présente étude était de mieux caractériser les capacités des patients atteints de schizophrénie à attribuer des connaissances et croyances à autrui en les impliquant dans une situation de conversation.

International audience; Thus, the aim of this study was threefold: (1) to determine whether the degree of contextual incongruity influences the extent to which individuals with right-frontal-hemisphere damage understand irony; (2) to identify the disrupted process (detection versus integration of contextual information) leading to impaired irony comprehension; and (3) to identify potential different pragmatic profiles within the RHD group.