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Advances in Cognitive Sciences 2024, 26(1): 109-124 |
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Mohammadi A, Ghassamzadeh H, Dabbagh H, Nematzadeh S, Sadeghi M. A psycholinguistic study of comprehension of emotional and non-emotional metaphors in two types of conventional and novel ones among Persian-speaking children. Advances in Cognitive Sciences 2024; 26 (1) :109-124
URL: http://icssjournal.ir/article-1-1691-en.html
URL: http://icssjournal.ir/article-1-1691-en.html
Atefeh Mohammadi *1 
, Habibollah Ghassamzadeh2 , Hossein Dabbagh3 , Shahin Nematzadeh4 , Meysam Sadeghi5
, Habibollah Ghassamzadeh2 , Hossein Dabbagh3 , Shahin Nematzadeh4 , Meysam Sadeghi5
1- PhD student, Department of Cognitive Linguistics, Institute for Cognitive Science Studies (ICSS), Tehran, Iran
2- Professor, Department of Psychiatric , Tehran University of Medicine Sciences, Tehran , Iran
3- Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Linguistics , ICSS, Tehran, Iran
4- Head of Linguistics Community, Tehran, Iran
5- Assistant Professor of Measurement, Department of Cognitive Psychology, ICSS, Tehran, Iran
2- Professor, Department of Psychiatric , Tehran University of Medicine Sciences, Tehran , Iran
3- Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Linguistics , ICSS, Tehran, Iran
4- Head of Linguistics Community, Tehran, Iran
5- Assistant Professor of Measurement, Department of Cognitive Psychology, ICSS, Tehran, Iran
Abstract: (1330 Views)
Introduction
Given the pivotal role of cognitive and mental development in childhood, numerous researchers have explored children’s metaphorical abilities from an early age. In the 1980s, investigations into metaphor comprehension introduced new scientific methods, enabling more detailed research. These studies, conducted in a linguistic context, assessed children’s performance through multiple-choice tests and evaluations (12). While some researchers initially doubted children’s capacity to understand metaphors early on, findings suggested that children aged 3-4 possess some ability to process figurative language. Although they might not fully articulate the underlying logic of metaphors, this ability gradually improves with age and cognitive development (13).
Based on some studies, children start to produce, understand, and differentiate literal from non-literal meanings around age 4. Their metaphorical understanding matures by age 8, and they create the most insightful metaphors between ages 10 and 12. This study compares the metaphorical comprehension of children aged 4 to 12 across types of metaphors: conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors. This study hypothesizes that older children better comprehend all metaphor types and all children better comprehend conventional and emotional metaphors than novel and non-emotional metaphors.
Methods
A total of 113 children (boys and girls) from kindergarten, preschool, and elementary schools in District 2 of Tehran (Saadat Abad) participated in the study. In this research, because questions related to different groups of metaphors in the tests were selected and presented based on stories from Persian children’s storybooks for age groups A, B, and C, the participants were divided into two groups: Group 1 consisted of 57 children (ages 4 to 7 years) and Group 2 included 56 children (ages 8 to 12 years). All children were from normal healthy backgrounds, with Persian as their first language, and none were bilingual. The core research employed two types of questionnaire tests, a multiple-choice and an interpretation task. The multiple-choice test consisted of 32 questions with three options in answers, each presenting short stories with metaphorical statements. Every set of eight questions pertained to a specific group of metaphors. Conventional-emotional metaphors, Conventional-non-emotional metaphors, Novel-emotional metaphors, and Novel-non-emotional metaphors. The interpretation test involved eight questions; every question was a short story with a metaphorical statement. In this test, every two questions were related to one of the types of metaphors. After a brief conversation to familiarize the child with the tests and directions to make them feel secure and ensure their cooperation, the examiner commenced the tests.
Participants were enrolled in one kindergarten, one preschool, and two elementary schools in District 2 of Tehran, Iran. Before the study commenced, a pre-test, consisting of a researcher-made test for Group 1 and some sub-scales of WISC-IV for Group 2, was administered to ensure normal or similar linguistic competence. The pre-tests were done on paper, but the basic tests were done using a laptop. Both tasks were designed based on reaction time (RT). The RT task is one of the most common tasks used when investigating the processes involved in metaphor comprehension. Difficulty, familiarity, and predictability of the stimulus affect the RT. The more complex a stimulus, the longer it takes to process the information. This research analyzed the accuracy of responses and their RTs.
Results
Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS version 26.0.0, incorporating both inferential and descriptive methods to evaluate the hypotheses. The present study focused on the early emergence of the inferential ability to grasp the metaphorical meaning, which is evident in the tests conducted as early as possible. Evidently, children’s proficiency in figurative language will further advance with developing their vocabulary, world knowledge, and processing resources.
The obtained findings suggest that children can comprehend metaphors as early as four years old, which is evident in both multiple-choice and interpretation tasks. The study delved into the age of metaphor processing and comprehension, revealing that children connect common abstract thoughts to concrete objects by around four years old. This challenges earlier views of Piaget (1959) (6), Piaget (1962) (7), Chukovsky (1968), Matter and Davis (1975) suggesting children could not grasp abstract concepts (According to Vosniadou (1987) (14)). While Vosniadou (1987) (14) contrasts this, stating that some children understand abstract concepts at 3 or 4, aligning with Vosniadou and Ortony (1986) (12), Billow (1981) (20), Gardner et al. (1978) (18). The research highlights that as cognitive and language development progress, so does metaphorical competency, emphasizing the correlation between cognitive and language growth.
The results showed that Persian-speaking children begin to understand abstract concepts and conceptual metaphors from the age of 4 (or even earlier). Additionally, older children demonstrated a better and more extensive comprehension of complex metaphorical expressions than younger children. The study’s empirical results indicated that, based on the designed tests, no significant difference was found in the comprehension of various types of conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors among Persian-speaking children aged 4 to 12 years.
Conclusions
The present study results show that children gain a better understanding of metaphorical concepts based on their ages. Both genders exhibited improved metaphorical understanding with age, supporting the hypothesis of age-related growth in metaphor comprehension, while the notion of better understanding conventional and emotional metaphors over novel and non-emotional ones among children remains unconfirmed. Based on the results of RT records, all children approximately reacted in a close range, and no significant difference was found in their RT, but totally older children answered a little sooner than younger ones. In summary, these findings collectively provide a comprehensive overview of early metaphorical understanding.
The results derived from the current research showed that even metaphorical representation may be an essential form of reflecting reality by children of preschool age because they had significantly more correct interpretations than expected. However, according to the results of this research, the “type” of metaphor does not determine the ease of interpretation.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This research was conducted following strict ethical principles, including maintaining participant confidentiality. Participants were assigned codes to ensure privacy, and their names were removed from the records. All participants were thoroughly informed about the research process and had the freedom to withdraw at any time. Given the involvement of human participants, this study underwent review and received approval from the Ethics Committee of the Research Institute of Cognitive Sciences under the code (IR.UT.IRICSS.REC.1402.002). Ethical considerations also included obtaining written consent from all participants and providing detailed information to parents about the research. Throughout the study, we adhered to all ethical guidelines to maintain high standards of integrity.
Authors’ contributions
First author: Topic selection, research design, resource/data collection, writing the text of the article. Second author: Topic selection, review, revision, and edit. Third author: Topic selection, review, revision, and edit. Fourth author: Review, revision, and edit. Fifth author: Contribution to data analysis. All authors discussed the results and participated in editing the final version of the article.
Funding
No financial support has been received from any organization for this research.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all participants who participated in this study.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.
Given the pivotal role of cognitive and mental development in childhood, numerous researchers have explored children’s metaphorical abilities from an early age. In the 1980s, investigations into metaphor comprehension introduced new scientific methods, enabling more detailed research. These studies, conducted in a linguistic context, assessed children’s performance through multiple-choice tests and evaluations (12). While some researchers initially doubted children’s capacity to understand metaphors early on, findings suggested that children aged 3-4 possess some ability to process figurative language. Although they might not fully articulate the underlying logic of metaphors, this ability gradually improves with age and cognitive development (13).
Based on some studies, children start to produce, understand, and differentiate literal from non-literal meanings around age 4. Their metaphorical understanding matures by age 8, and they create the most insightful metaphors between ages 10 and 12. This study compares the metaphorical comprehension of children aged 4 to 12 across types of metaphors: conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors. This study hypothesizes that older children better comprehend all metaphor types and all children better comprehend conventional and emotional metaphors than novel and non-emotional metaphors.
Methods
A total of 113 children (boys and girls) from kindergarten, preschool, and elementary schools in District 2 of Tehran (Saadat Abad) participated in the study. In this research, because questions related to different groups of metaphors in the tests were selected and presented based on stories from Persian children’s storybooks for age groups A, B, and C, the participants were divided into two groups: Group 1 consisted of 57 children (ages 4 to 7 years) and Group 2 included 56 children (ages 8 to 12 years). All children were from normal healthy backgrounds, with Persian as their first language, and none were bilingual. The core research employed two types of questionnaire tests, a multiple-choice and an interpretation task. The multiple-choice test consisted of 32 questions with three options in answers, each presenting short stories with metaphorical statements. Every set of eight questions pertained to a specific group of metaphors. Conventional-emotional metaphors, Conventional-non-emotional metaphors, Novel-emotional metaphors, and Novel-non-emotional metaphors. The interpretation test involved eight questions; every question was a short story with a metaphorical statement. In this test, every two questions were related to one of the types of metaphors. After a brief conversation to familiarize the child with the tests and directions to make them feel secure and ensure their cooperation, the examiner commenced the tests.
Participants were enrolled in one kindergarten, one preschool, and two elementary schools in District 2 of Tehran, Iran. Before the study commenced, a pre-test, consisting of a researcher-made test for Group 1 and some sub-scales of WISC-IV for Group 2, was administered to ensure normal or similar linguistic competence. The pre-tests were done on paper, but the basic tests were done using a laptop. Both tasks were designed based on reaction time (RT). The RT task is one of the most common tasks used when investigating the processes involved in metaphor comprehension. Difficulty, familiarity, and predictability of the stimulus affect the RT. The more complex a stimulus, the longer it takes to process the information. This research analyzed the accuracy of responses and their RTs.
Results
Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS version 26.0.0, incorporating both inferential and descriptive methods to evaluate the hypotheses. The present study focused on the early emergence of the inferential ability to grasp the metaphorical meaning, which is evident in the tests conducted as early as possible. Evidently, children’s proficiency in figurative language will further advance with developing their vocabulary, world knowledge, and processing resources.
The obtained findings suggest that children can comprehend metaphors as early as four years old, which is evident in both multiple-choice and interpretation tasks. The study delved into the age of metaphor processing and comprehension, revealing that children connect common abstract thoughts to concrete objects by around four years old. This challenges earlier views of Piaget (1959) (6), Piaget (1962) (7), Chukovsky (1968), Matter and Davis (1975) suggesting children could not grasp abstract concepts (According to Vosniadou (1987) (14)). While Vosniadou (1987) (14) contrasts this, stating that some children understand abstract concepts at 3 or 4, aligning with Vosniadou and Ortony (1986) (12), Billow (1981) (20), Gardner et al. (1978) (18). The research highlights that as cognitive and language development progress, so does metaphorical competency, emphasizing the correlation between cognitive and language growth.
The results showed that Persian-speaking children begin to understand abstract concepts and conceptual metaphors from the age of 4 (or even earlier). Additionally, older children demonstrated a better and more extensive comprehension of complex metaphorical expressions than younger children. The study’s empirical results indicated that, based on the designed tests, no significant difference was found in the comprehension of various types of conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors among Persian-speaking children aged 4 to 12 years.
Conclusions
The present study results show that children gain a better understanding of metaphorical concepts based on their ages. Both genders exhibited improved metaphorical understanding with age, supporting the hypothesis of age-related growth in metaphor comprehension, while the notion of better understanding conventional and emotional metaphors over novel and non-emotional ones among children remains unconfirmed. Based on the results of RT records, all children approximately reacted in a close range, and no significant difference was found in their RT, but totally older children answered a little sooner than younger ones. In summary, these findings collectively provide a comprehensive overview of early metaphorical understanding.
The results derived from the current research showed that even metaphorical representation may be an essential form of reflecting reality by children of preschool age because they had significantly more correct interpretations than expected. However, according to the results of this research, the “type” of metaphor does not determine the ease of interpretation.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This research was conducted following strict ethical principles, including maintaining participant confidentiality. Participants were assigned codes to ensure privacy, and their names were removed from the records. All participants were thoroughly informed about the research process and had the freedom to withdraw at any time. Given the involvement of human participants, this study underwent review and received approval from the Ethics Committee of the Research Institute of Cognitive Sciences under the code (IR.UT.IRICSS.REC.1402.002). Ethical considerations also included obtaining written consent from all participants and providing detailed information to parents about the research. Throughout the study, we adhered to all ethical guidelines to maintain high standards of integrity.
Authors’ contributions
First author: Topic selection, research design, resource/data collection, writing the text of the article. Second author: Topic selection, review, revision, and edit. Third author: Topic selection, review, revision, and edit. Fourth author: Review, revision, and edit. Fifth author: Contribution to data analysis. All authors discussed the results and participated in editing the final version of the article.
Funding
No financial support has been received from any organization for this research.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all participants who participated in this study.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.
Keywords: Psycholinguistic study, Conventional metaphors, Novel metaphors, Emotional metaphors, Children
Type of Study: Research |
Received: 2024/06/14 | Accepted: 2024/08/15 | Published: 2024/08/28
Received: 2024/06/14 | Accepted: 2024/08/15 | Published: 2024/08/28
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