New research appearing in Neuropsychology details the anatomy of sarcasm and explains how the mind puts sharp-tongued words into context. The psychologists behind the research explain that for sarcasm to work, listeners must grasp the speaker's intentions in the context of the situation, which calls for sophisticated social thinking and whether we understand that everyone thinks different thoughts. An example of what happens when this "theory of mind" is missing can be found in autistic children, who have problems interpreting irony, the more general category of social communication into which sarcasm falls.