Preschoolers and Adults Learn From Novel Metaphors

Zhu, Rebecca; Gopnik, Alison

doi:10.1177/09567976231165267

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Moreover, these semantic generalizations may be a useful word learning mechanism from the preschool years onwards. Second, while previous research may have suggested that children have difficulty with non-literal language, the current work supports new research showing that children possess an early-emerging competence with various kinds of non-literal language (Falkum et al, 2017;Zhu, 2021;Zhu et al, 2020, in press;Zhu & Gopnik, 2023). Indeed, children could reliably understand a novel kind of metonymic extension that is not found in their everyday language.…”

Section: Gen Er a L Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Preschoolers and adults metonymically extend proper names to owned objects

Zhu,

Gopnik

2023

Child Development

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Three preregistered experiments, conducted in 2021, investigated whether English‐speaking American preschoolers (N = 120; 4–6 years; 54 females, predominantly White) and adults (N = 80; 18–52 years; 59 females, predominantly Asian) metonymically extend owners' names to owned objects—an extension not typically found in English. In Experiment 1, 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds and adults extended names to owned objects over duplicates (d = 0.34 in children; d = 1.13 in adults). In Experiment 2, 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds and adults extended names to owned over borrowed objects (d = 1.37 in children; d = 4.34 in adults). Experiment 3 replicated this finding with 4‐year‐olds (d = 0.43). Thus, English‐speaking preschoolers can acquire semantic generalizations, even those not present in their language.

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Section: Gen Er a L Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Preschoolers and adults metonymically extend proper names to owned objects

Zhu,

Gopnik

2023

Child Development

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“…That noted, taking into consideration both gaze and picture selection performance of participants aged six and older gives us confidence to infer successful comprehension for these age brackets. Moreover, there is recent evidence that children as young as 4 years old can use novel metaphorical meaning in their reasoning (Zhu & Gopnik, 2023), so that would speak in favor of our six-year-olds being capable of understanding metaphors in a deeper way. But how can we understand the performance of children who are five and under who prefer the metaphoric referent according to their gaze behavior at least until question onset, yet tend to select the literal picture?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

That kid is a grasshopper! Metaphor development from 3 to 9 years of age

Martín-González,

R. Ronderos,

Castroviejo

et al. 2024

J. Child Lang.

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Two major trends on children’s skills to comprehend metaphors have governed the literature on the subject: the literal stage hypothesis vs. the early birds hypothesis (Falkum, 2022). We aim to contribute to this debate by testing children’s capability to comprehend novel metaphors (‘X is a Y’) in Spanish with a child-friendly, picture selection task, while also tracking their gaze. Further, given recent findings on the development of metonymy comprehension suggesting a U-shaped developmental curve for this phenomenon (Köder & Falkum, 2020), we aimed to determine the shape of the developmental trajectory of novel metaphor comprehension, and to explore how both types of data (picture selection and gaze behavior) relate to each other. Our results suggest a linear developmental trajectory with 6-year-olds significantly succeeding in picture selection and consistently looking at the metaphorical target even after question onset.

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“…One recent study showed that preschoolers can learn from abstract metaphors (Zhu & Gopnik, 2023 ). In this experimental paradigm, preschoolers heard information about novel toys conveyed through metaphors that described the objects’ functional capacities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Functional Metaphors

Zhu,

Goddu,

Zhu

et al. 2024

Open Mind

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Previous work suggests that preschoolers often misunderstand metaphors. However, some recent studies demonstrate that preschoolers can represent abstract relations, suggesting that the cognitive foundations of metaphor comprehension may develop earlier than previously believed. The present experiments used novel paradigms to explore whether preschoolers (N = 200; 4–5 years; 100 males, 100 females; predominantly White) can understand metaphors based on abstract, functional similarities. In Experiment 1, preschoolers and adults (N = 64; 18–41 years; 25 males, 39 females; predominantly White) rated functional metaphors (e.g., “Roofs are hats”; “Tires are shoes”) as “smarter” than nonsense statements (e.g., “Boats are skirts”; “Pennies are sunglasses”) in a metalinguistic judgment task (d = .42 in preschoolers; d = 3.06 in adults). In Experiment 2, preschoolers preferred functional explanations (e.g., “Both keep you dry”) over perceptual explanations (e.g., “Both have pointy tops”) when interpreting functional metaphors (e.g., “Roofs are hats”) (d = .99). In Experiment 3, preschoolers preferred functional metaphors (e.g., “Roofs are hats”) over nonsense statements (e.g., “Roofs are scissors”) when prompted to select the “better” utterance (d = 1.25). Moreover, over a quarter of preschoolers in Experiment 1 and half of preschoolers in Experiment 3 explicitly articulated functional similarities when justifying their responses, and the performance of these subsets of children drove the success of the entire sample in both experiments. These findings demonstrate that preschoolers can understand metaphors based on abstract, functional similarities.

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Preschoolers and Adults Learn From Novel Metaphors

Cited by 7 publications

References 36 publications

Preschoolers and adults metonymically extend proper names to owned objects

Preschoolers and adults metonymically extend proper names to owned objects

That kid is a grasshopper! Metaphor development from 3 to 9 years of age

Preschoolers’ Comprehension of Functional Metaphors

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