Design and validation of a sarcasm recognition task

Pragmatic language, which includes expressions of non-literal meaning, is crucial for social cognition, yet current assessment techniques are inadequate for the neurotypical population. This study was designed to develop and validate a sarcasm recognition task, a domain of pragmatic language, in a sample of 84 healthy adults. The task was specifically created for Spanish-speakers, highlighting its cultural and linguistic relevance. In experiment 1, forty original vignettes containing sarcastic or literal content were evaluated by 49 subjects to select reliable stimuli, resulting in a subset with high reliability. In experiment 2, the new task and a neuropsychological screening battery were administered to 35 healthy adults. Cronbach's alpha was used to analyze reliability, and correlation indices with gold standard social cognition tests were computed. Experiment 1 yielded 40 reliable stimuli (Cronbach's Alpha: 0.818), which constituted the final version of the task. These same 40 items were administered in Experiment 2, where the task demonstrated significant correlations with established social cognition tests. The findings indicate that the novel sarcasm recognition task is brief (40 total items), reliable and robust, without ceiling effects on the neurotypical population, and its design will allow for evaluation in parallel with fMRI scans.