Metaphor Comprehension Special Issue

Decoupling literalist behavior from children’s early metaphor comprehension abilities

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Abstract

Children’s literalist responses to metaphor comprehension tasks are often taken to indicate deficient metaphor comprehension. We aimed to decouple this assumed (literalist) performance–(metaphor) competence link and investigate whether children’s observed literalism is best explained by an early difficulty with metaphor. We assessed 3- to 7-year-olds’ metaphor comprehension abilities using different novel functional, attributional, and psychological metaphors in a between-subjects design. We found that when not provided with literal options, children could derive metaphorical interpretations successfully. This was further supported by longer reaction times for metaphorical over literal interpretations. However, when literal options were available, even adults predominantly chose them over metaphorical interpretations. These findings challenge the view that children’s literalism stems solely from difficulty with metaphor and urge researchers to more clearly distinguish studies assessing sensitivity to metaphorical meaning from those investigating the ability to prioritize a metaphorical interpretation over a literal one.

Keywords: metaphor, literal bias, pragmatics, children