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

First and second language child speakers of Afrikaans’s knowledge of figurative language

“…In the present study, the completion of similes was found to be easier than the comprehension of idioms, supporting the finding by Pretorius (1989: 22), Reynolds and Ortony (1980), and Seidenberg and Bernstein (1986) that similes are significantly easier to comprehend than other forms of figurative language. Furthermore, it appeared that providing an idiom in context (as opposed to providing a 'bare' idiom) aided the comprehension of such idiom, as also found by Cain et al (2001) and Levorato et al (1992).…”

“…The semantic analysability of an idiom has proved to be of importance for both adults and children in idiom comprehension, and takes precedence over the syntactic form of the expression (Wasow, Sag & Nunberg, 1983;Gibbs, Nayak & Cutting, 1989;Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1991;Gibbs, 1991: 614;Gibbs & Nayak, 1991). Similes are significantly easier to comprehend than other forms of figurative language, including idioms, due to similes' greater linguistic explicitness and obvious referential domains (Reynolds & Ortony, 1980;Seidenberg & Bernstein, 1986;Pretorius, 1989: 22).…”

Systematicity and surface similarity in the development of analogy

“…Research on development of metaphor has shown repeatedly that children do not articulate their interpretation of metaphors in the same manner as adults (Gardner, Kircher, Winner & Perkins, 1975;Gentner & Stuart, 1983;Reynolds & Ortony, 1980;Vosniadou & Ortony, 1983;Winner, Rosenstiel & Gardner, 1976). However, we cannot therefore infer that children Development of Analogy 31 are intellectually unable to perform metaphorical and analogical transfer (cf.…”

“…However, it has been pointed out that a number of factors enter into the assessment of metaphoric and analogical ability (Gentner, 1977;Reynolds & Ortony, 1980;Vosniadou, 1985). Young In order to isolate development of analogy from other developmental trends, we must first delineate the essential processes that define analogy and metaphor.…”

Developmental versus language-based factors in metaphor interpretation.

“…As have other researchers (e.g., Pollio & Pickens, 1980;Vosniadou et al, 1984;Winner, 1988), Vosniadou criticized the use of verbal paraphrase to assess metaphor comprehension, claiming that paraphrase places a linguistic load on the child over and above that of tacit metaphor comprehension. She also implicated the following factors in metaphor comprehension: (a) the linguistic form of the metaphoric expression, as the familiarity of the linguistic form and the extent to which it makes explicit the metaphoric comparison can facilitate young children's metaphor comprehension (e.g., Reynolds & Ortony, 1980;Winner ct al., 1980), and (b) the provision of appropriate linguistic context as opposed to decontcxtualizcd metaphoric sentences (e.g., Vosniadou ctal., 1984;Winner ctal., 1980). Finally, Vosniadou (1987a) appealed to children's limited knowledge of words and the concepts they denote (sec also Baldwin, Luce, & Rcadence, 1982).…”