Cover not available

In:Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Danielle Matthews
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10] 2014
► pp. 239–260

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

“The elevator’s buttocks”

Metaphorical abilities in children

Published online: 26 June 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.14pou
Classic studies suggest that metaphor production and comprehension are relatively late developing pragmatic skills, although it is not quite clear why this should be so. This chapter will first provide a sketch of the theoretical and adult processing accounts of metaphor before presenting an overview of the established findings on children’s metaphorical abilities that indicate that these are slow to emerge. The third section examines impeding factors to be taken into account when considering these data, while in the fourth it is argued, based on recent empirical evidence, that when these factors are eliminated, children display both early comprehension and production of metaphors. In the conclusion, I will point to some future directions of research emerging from this outline of the metaphor development landscape.
References (68)
Amanzio, M., Geminiani, G., Leotta, D., & Cappa, S. (2007). Metaphor comprehension in Alzheimer’s disease: Novelty matters. Brain and Language , 107(1), 1–10. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Asch, S. & Nerlove, H. (1960). The development of double function terms in children: An exploratory investigation. In B. Kaplan & S. Wapner (Eds), Perspectives in Psychological Theory: Essays in Honor of Heinz Werner (pp. 47–60). New York, NY: International Universities Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berger, F., & Höhle, B. (2012). Restrictions on addition: Children’s interpretation of the focus particles auch (‘also’) and nur (‘only’) in German. Journal of Child Language , 39, 383–410. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Billow, R. (1981). Observing spontaneous metaphor in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 31(3), 430–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1973). One Word at a Time: The Use of Single Word Utterances Before Syntax . The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloom, P. (2000). How Children Learn the Meaning of Words . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, E.V. (2003). First Language Acquisition . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carston, R. (2010). Metaphor: Ad hoc concepts, literal meaning and mental images. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 110(3), 295–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cometa, M., & Eson, M. (1978). Logical operations and metaphor interpretation: A piagetian model. Child Development , 49, 649–659. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deamer, F. (2013). An Investigation into the Processes and Mechanisms Underlying the Comprehension of Metaphor and Hyperbole . Unpublished PhD dissertation. University College London.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dryll, E. (2009). Changes in metaphor comprehension in children. Polish Psychological Bulletin , 40(4), 201–212. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1977). If a tree had a knee, where would it be? Children’s performance on simple spatial metaphors. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development , 13, 157–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1988). Structure-mapping in analogical development: The relational shift. Child Development , 59, 47–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gentner, D., Bowdle, B.F., Wolff, P., & Boronat, C. (2001). Metaphor is like analogy. In D. Gentner, K.J. Holyoak, & B.N. Kokinov (Eds.), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (pp. 199–253). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gershkoff-Stowe, L., Connell, B., & Smith, L. (2006). Priming overgeneralizations in two- and four-year-old children. Journal of Child Language , 33, 461–486. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, R.W. (1994). The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding . ­Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giora, R. (1997). Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics , 8, 183–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gold, R., Faust, M., & Goldstein, A. (2010). Semantic integration during metaphor comprehension in Asperger syndrome. Brain & Language , 113, 124–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics: Speech Acts (Vol. 3) (pp. 41–58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Reprinted in Grice (1989), 22–40.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1989). Studies in the Ways of Words . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S. (2001). Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphor to Idioms . Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2003). The psycholinguistics of metaphor. Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 7(2), 92–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S., & Haught, C. (2006). On the relation between metaphor and simile: When comparison fails. Mind and Language , 21(3), 360–378. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S., & Keysar, B. (1993). How metaphors work. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought , 2nd edn (pp. 401–424). Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gordon, P. (1998). The truth-value judgment task. In D. McDaniel, C. McKee, & H. Smith (Eds.) Methods for Assessing Children’s Syntax (pp. 211–231). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goswami, U. (2001). Analogical reasoning in children. In K. Holyoak, D. Gentner, & B. Kokinov (Eds), The Analogical Mind: Perspectives from Cognitive Science (pp. 437–470). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Happé, F. (1993). Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory. Cognition , 48, 101–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harris, P. (1982). Cognitive prerequisites to language? British Journal of Psychology , 73, 187–195. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, J. (1982). The Development of Metaphor Comprehension: Its Mental-Model Demand Measurement and its Process Analytical Models . Unpublished PhD dissertation. York ­University, Toronto.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katsos, N. & Bishop, D.V.M. (2011). Pragmatic tolerance: Implications for the acquisition of informativeness and implicature. Cognition , 120, 67–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keil, F. (1986). Conceptual domains and the acquisition of metaphor. Cognitive Development , 1, 73–96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (2nd Ed., pp. 202–251). Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McDaniel, D., McKee, C. & Smith, H. (1998). Methods for Assessing Children’s Syntax . ­Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McElree, B., & Nordlie, J. (1999). Literal and figurative interpretations are computed in parallel. Psychonomic Bulletin Review , 6, 486–494. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Monetta, L., & Pell, M.D. (2007). Effects of verbal working memory deficits on metaphor comprehension in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Brain and Language , 101, 80–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norbury, C. (2005). The relationship between Theory of Mind and metaphor: Evidence from children with language impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. British Journal of Developmental Psychology , 23, 383–399. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noveck, I, Bianco, M., & Castri, A. (2001). The costs and benefits of metaphor. Metaphor & Symbol , 16(1–2), 79–91. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nippold, M.A.(1988/1998). Later Language Development: The School-Age and Adolescent Years (2nd Ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Özçaliskan, S. (2005). On learning to draw the distinction between physical and metaphorical motion: Is metaphor an early emerging cognitive and linguistic capacity? Journal of Child Language , 32, 291–318. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2007). Metaphors we move by: Children’s developing understanding of metaphorical motion in typologically distinct languages. Metaphor and Symbol , 22(2), 147–168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Papagno, C. Lucchelli, F. Muggia, S., & Rizzo, S. (2003). Idiom comprehension in Alzheimer’s disease: The role of the central executive. Brain , 126, 2419–2430. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pearson, B. (1990). The comprehension of metaphor by preschool children. Journal of Child Language , 17(1), 185–203. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pierce, R. Maclaren, R., & Chiappe, D. (2010). The role of WM in the metaphor interference effect. Psyhonomic Bulletin & Review , 17(3), 400–404. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pouscoulous, N. (2011). Metaphor: For adults only?, Belgian Journal of Linguistics , 25, 64–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2013). Early pragmatics with words. In F. Liedke & C. Schulze (Eds.), Beyond the Words: Content, Context and Inference (pp. 149–171). Berlin: De Gruyter ­Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pouscoulous, N., Noveck, I., Politzer, G., & Bastide, A. (2007). Processing costs and implicature development. Language Acquisition , 14(4), 347–376. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pouscoulous, N., & Tomasello, M. (In preparation). Very early understanding of metaphors.
Rabagliati, H., Marcus, G.F., & Pylkkänen, L. (2010). Shifting senses in lexical semantic development. Cognition, 117 , 17–37.
Recanati, F. (2004). Literal Meaning . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rubio Fernández, P. (2007). Suppression in metaphor interpretation: Differences between meaning selection and meaning construction. Journal of Semantics , 24, 345–371. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rundblad, G., & Annaz, D. (2010). The atypical development of metaphor and metonymy comprehension in children with autism. Autism , 14, 29–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1979). Metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought (pp. 92–123). Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siqueira, M. & Gibbs, R. (2007). Children’s acquisition of primary metaphors: A crosslinguistic study. Organon , 21(43), 161–179.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, J. (1976). Children’s comprehension of metaphor: A piagetian interpretation. Language and Speech , 19, 236–243.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (2008). A deflationary account of metaphors. In R. Gibbs (Ed.), Handbook of Metaphor and Thought (pp. 84–105). Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Swinney, D.A. (1979). Lexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re)consideration of context effects. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour , 18, 645–659. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2008). Origins of Human Communication . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vosniadou, S., Ortony, A. Reynolds, R, & Wilson, P. (1984). Sources of difficulty in children’s understanding of metaphorical language. Child Development , 55, 1588–1606. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walaszewska, E. (2011). Broadening and narrowing in lexical development: How relevance theory can account for children’s overextensions and underextensions. Journal of Pragmatics , 43(1), 314–326. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Waggoner, J., & Palermo, D. (1989). Betty is a bouncing bubble: Children’s comprehension of emotion-descriptive metaphors. Developmental Psychology , 25(1), 152–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, D., & Carston, R. (2006). Metaphor, relevance and the emergent property issue. Mind and Language , 21(3), 404–433. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2007). A unitary approach to lexical pragmatics: Relevance, inference and ad hoc concepts. In N. Burton-Roberts (Ed.), Advances in Pragmatics (pp. 230–260). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winner, E.(1988/1997). The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Winner, E., Rosenstiel, A. & Gardner, H. (1976). The development of metaphoric understanding. Developmental Psychology , 12, 289–297. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolff, P., & Gentner, D. (2000). Evidence for role-neutral initial processing of metaphors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition , 26, 529–541. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (18)

Cited by 18 other publications

Wei, Shouhong, Yunxuan Sun, Guo Liu & Peng Peng
2025. Using Story-Based Thinking Maps to Enhance Metaphor Comprehension Skills in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders DOI logo
O’Shea, Aimee, Rita Cersosimo & Paul E. Engelhardt
2024. Online Metaphor Comprehension in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Eye Tracking Study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders DOI logo
Peláez Torres, Marta
2024. La comprensión de enunciados metafóricos a edades tempranas: estudio con niños hispanohablantes de 3 y 4 años. ELUA: Estudios de Lingüística. Universidad de Alicante :41 ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo
Vicente, Agustín, Christian Michel & Valentina Petrolini
2024. Literalism in Autistic People: a Predictive Processing Proposal. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 15:4 ► pp. 1133 ff. DOI logo
Gaskins, Dorota & Gabriella Rundblad
2023. Metaphor production in the bilingual acquisition of English and Polish. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José Ruiz de
2023. Irony and Cognitive Operations. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 38 ff. DOI logo
Peng, Zhibin & Omid Khatin-Zadeh
2023. Research on metaphor processing during the past five decades: a bibliometric analysis. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1 DOI logo
Beeching, Kate & Ludivine Crible
2022. Crosslinguistic paths of pragmatic development. Pragmatics & Cognition 29:2 ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo
Ifantidou, Elly & Anna Piata
2021. Metaphor and mental shortcuts. Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2 ► pp. 299 ff. DOI logo
Vicente, Agustín & Isabel Martín-González
2021. The literalist bias in the autistic spectrum conditions: review of existing accounts (El sesgo literalista en las condiciones del espectro autista: revisión de las teorías existentes). Studies in Psychology 42:2 ► pp. 298 ff. DOI logo
Allen, Melissa L. & Harriet Butler
2020. Can drawings facilitate symbolic understanding of figurative language in children?. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 38:3 ► pp. 345 ff. DOI logo
Andrés-Roqueta, Clara & Rosa Ana Clemente
2019. Idiom understanding competence of Spanish children with Specific Language Impairment and Pragmatic Language Impairment. In Atypical Language Development in Romance Languages, ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Willinger, Ulrike, Matthias Deckert, Michaela Schmöger, Ines Schaunig-Busch, Anton K Formann & Eduard Auff
2019. Developmental Steps in Metaphorical Language Abilities: The Influence of Age, Gender, Cognitive Flexibility, Information Processing Speed, and Analogical Reasoning. Language and Speech 62:2 ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
Kalandadze, Tamar, Courtenay Norbury, Terje Nærland & Kari-Anne B Næss
2018. Figurative language comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analytic review. Autism 22:2 ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
Airenti, Gabriella
2017. Pragmatic Development. In Research in Clinical Pragmatics [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 11], ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina & Jörg Meibauer
2017. Metaphorical maps in picturebooks. In Maps and mapping in children’s literature [Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition, 7], ► pp. 75 ff. DOI logo
Bambini, Valentina, Chiara Bertini, Walter Schaeken, Alessandra Stella & Francesco Di Russo
2016. Disentangling Metaphor from Context: An ERP Study. Frontiers in Psychology 7 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. The Scope of Irony. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue