Young Children's Perception and Comprehension of Metaphorical Similarities in Pictures and in Words.

This study was designed to determine whether children 3, 4, and 5 years of age could demonstrate their metaphorical competence equally well in words and in pictures. Previous studies which have investigated young children's metaphorical ability have often encouraged young children to make judgments of similarity which rely almost exclusively on visually apparent perceptual qualities such as shape and color. This study was concerned with whether children were also capable of understanding metaphorical similarities based on implicit, not visually apparent functional and causal resemblances as well as explicit visually apparent perceptual resemblances providing that the concepts involved were familiar to the children. The results of this study indicate that all children, regardless of age, were able to recognize and explain more metaphorical similarities in pictures than in words. Therefore it appears that the mental operations required for metaphorical comprehension become available to children sometime before the age of 3. In contrast to other studies that have indicated that young children are cognitively limited to abstracting similar perceptual features between items from different categories, this study indicates that preschool children are able to give highly appropriate explanations for connecting functionally and causally related metaphors. (Author)