Proverbial Understanding in a Pictorial Context

Honeck, Richard P.; Sowry, Brenda M.; Voegtle, Katherine

doi:10.2307/1128694

Cited by 35 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Results indicated that the acquisition of idiomatic meaning does not accelerate until after age nine. Additionally, Honeck, Sowry, and Voegtle (1978) showed increased performance across subjects, ages and proverbial comprehension.…”

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confidence: 90%

Severe-To-Profound Hearing-Impaired Children's Comprehension of Figurative Language

Orlando¹,

Shulman

1989

Journal of Childhool Communication Disorders

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This study investigated severe-to-profound hearing-impaired school-age children's comprehension of figurative language. Twelve severe-to-profound hearing-impaired children, ages 9 to 19 years, served as subjects. Twenty sentences, subdivided into four groups (similes, metaphors, idioms, proverbs) comprised the stimulus items. Subjects were instructed to read the sentences and explain them. Three judges rated the subjects' responses on a scale from one (literal interpretation) to three (nonliteral interpretation). Data generated from the hearing-impaired group were compared with the performance of a control group. A significant between-group diference was noted. Furthermore, a regression analysis indicated that the hearing-impaired subjects' performance appeared more dependent upon reading level and was variable across chronological age. FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE is language which deviates from the literal or standard construction, from the established and expected significance to achieve special meaning or effect (Robertson, 1973). According to Wiig and Semel (1976), the ability to identify changes in word meanings and translate the word meanings into abstract and generalized language is basic to the comprehension of figurative language. During early adolescence, it becomes increasingly important to appropriately interpret and use figurative references in both social and academic situations (Wiig & Semel, 1976).Investigators have studied the comprehension of figurative language by severeto-profound hearing impaired children and assert that such individuals demonstrate difficulty understanding such references (Myklebust, 1953; Blackwell, Engen, Fischgrund, & Zaracadoolas, 1978). It has also been reported that severe-toprofound hearing impaired adolescents, either interpret something as literal or it is absurd and therefore, the material is interpreted as insignificant.Acquisition offigurative language in normally-developing children. Billow (1975) indicated that metaphor comprehension is related to maturing cognitive operations suggesting that a &dquo;figurative sense&dquo; is evident as early as five and seven years of at SIMON FRASER LIBRARY on June 3, 2015 cdq.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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confidence: 90%

Severe-To-Profound Hearing-Impaired Children's Comprehension of Figurative Language

Orlando¹,

Shulman

1989

Journal of Childhool Communication Disorders

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“…There have also been numerous attempts to show that the development of the ability to understand metaphors is tied to Piagetian stages (e.g., Billow, 1975;Cometa & Eson, 1978). In addition, there have been studies aimed at demonstrating that children can understand metaphorical uses of language at much younger ages than the bulk of the available evidence implies (e.g., Gentner, 1977;Honeck, Sowry, & Voegtle, 1978).…”

Section: Metaphorical Language 2 Some Issues In the Measurement Of Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some Issues in the Measurement of Children's Comprehension of Metaphorical Language

Reynolds¹,

Ortony²

1980

Child Development

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“…Reynolds and Ortony (1980), using a four alternative forced choice task and the context of a short story, found that 7-year-olds showed evidence of metaphor comprehension. And, in the context of proverb comprehension, Honeck, Sowry and Voegtle (1978) found that 7-year-old children could understand proverbs when they had to match a proverb to one of two pictures--a nonliteral correct interpretation of the proverb and a foil. Yet even tasks such as these have their limitations: they do not give the child the opportunity to respond spontaneously and they still impose additional cognitive demands.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sources of Difficulty in the Young Child's Understanding of Metaphorical Language

Vosniadou¹,

Ortony²,

Reynolds³

et al. 1984

Child Development

148

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Sources of Difficulty in the Yound Child's Understanding of Metaphorical LanguageThree experiments examined children's understanding of metaphorical language.In these experiments, preschool, first grade, and third grade children heard short stories ending with a metaphorical sentence describing an action. They were then asked to act out the stories and the metaphorical sentences using toys in a specially constructed "toy world." Metaphor comprehension was assessed on the basis of the children's enactments. The experiments manipulated the predictability of the story endings given the already established context, and two aspects of the complexity of the metaphorical sentences themselves: the verb of the metaphorical sentence (literal versus nonliteral verb), and the explicitness of its comparative structure (simile versus metaphor). Results showed that both the predictability of the story endings and the complexity of the metaphorical sentences had a marked effect on the difficulty of the metaphor comprehension task. The data were interpreted as supporting the view that the success or failure in comprehending metaphorical language depends on the overall difficulty of the comprehension task, conceptualized in terms of the interactive effects of different difficulty sources, rather than simply on the fact that a linguistic input requires a metaphorical interpretation. The experiments also identified some of the conditions under which even preschool children show evidence of metaphor comprehension, and clarified aspects of the development of metaphoric competence.Existing research reveals conflicting findings about the ability of children to understand metaphorical language. While research directly investigating children's comprehension of metaphor tends to show that metaphor comprehension does not occur until late childhood or early adolescence (Asch & Nerlove, 1960; Billow, 1975;Cometa & Eson, 1978;Winner, Rosenstiel & Gardner, 1976), there is other evidence that even preschool children have some basic metaphoric competence. For example, Gardner (1974) found that given a pair of adjectives (hard/soft) and a pair of sounds, colors, or faces, 3 1/2-year-old children could sometimes match such adjectives with an appropriate sound, color or face. Gentner (1977) also showed that preschool children can perform analogical mappings from the domain of the human body to pictures of mountains or trees as consistently as adults.Further support for the idea that young children have some basic metaphoric competence comes from observations that preschool children are very creative in their use of language, making sophisticated comparisons that involve the ability to see similarity between things that, at a superficial level, seem very dissimilar (Billow, 1981;Carlson & Anisfeld, 1969; Chukovsky, 1968;Gardner, Winner, Bechhofer & Wolf, 1978;Piaget, 1962; Winner, MacCarthy, & Gardner, 1980 (1983) found that by four years of age children are able to distinguish comparisons based on metaphorical similarity from those ba...

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Proverbial Understanding in a Pictorial Context

Cited by 35 publications

References 0 publications

Severe-To-Profound Hearing-Impaired Children's Comprehension of Figurative Language

Severe-To-Profound Hearing-Impaired Children's Comprehension of Figurative Language

Some Issues in the Measurement of Children's Comprehension of Metaphorical Language

Sources of Difficulty in the Young Child's Understanding of Metaphorical Language

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