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Research Article: Linguistic Skills and Socioeconomic Status: Two Oft Forgotten Factors in Child Metaphor Comprehension

Date Published: 2023-11-25

Abstract:
Metaphor understanding can be tricky for children until mid-childhood, yet some research suggests that pre-schoolers are already competent. Many factors have been proposed to play a role in the development of metaphor comprehension. In this study we focus on two obvious contenders that have been overlooked in recent years: general language skills and socioeconomic status (SES). Two-hundred and seventy-two children, aged from 2;11 to 11;04 (146 girls) were recruited from 21 British schools and nurseries. Their SES was established using a composite measure linked to school location, while general language skills were assessed using a standardised measure of vocabulary comprehension. Novel metaphor comprehension was tested with a simple reference assignment task. Our study confirms that children interpret novel metaphors confidently from the age of 4. Our findings indicate that novel metaphor understanding is associated with age and, importantly, that it is linked to vocabulary skills, as well as SES, but not gender. These two factors should therefore be considered in future research on metaphor development, as well as intervention and education.

Introduction:
Metaphor is prevalent in formal written language, as well as in the most mundane everyday speech. A child must therefore learn to understand metaphors to fully master linguistic communication. Traditionally, metaphor comprehension has been found to emerge relatively late—possibly not fully until mid-to-late childhood or even adolescence (for reviews see [1,2,3]). These early findings have been attributed in part to methodological issues, such as employing metalinguistic tasks, young children’s limited world…

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