That kid is a grasshopper! Metaphor development from 3 to 9 years of age

• Published in: Journal of child language Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 945 - 970
• Main Authors: Martín-González, Isabel, R. Ronderos, Camilo, Castroviejo, Elena, Schroeder, Kristen, Lossius-Falkum, Ingrid, Vicente, Agustín
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01.07.2025
• Subjects: Child; Child Development; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Comprehension; Female; Humans; Male; Metaphor; eye-tracking; experimental pragmatics; metaphor development; figurative language
• ISSN: 0305-0009; 1469-7602; 1469-7602
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305000924000187

Two major trends on children’s skills to comprehend metaphors have governed the literature on the subject: the literal stage hypothesis vs. the early birds hypothesis (Falkum, 2022). We aim to contribute to this debate by testing children’s capability to comprehend novel metaphors (‘X is a Y’) in Spanish with a child-friendly, picture selection task, while also tracking their gaze. Further, given recent findings on the development of metonymy comprehension suggesting a U-shaped developmental curve for this phenomenon (Köder & Falkum, 2020), we aimed to determine the shape of the developmental trajectory of novel metaphor comprehension, and to explore how both types of data (picture selection and gaze behavior) relate to each other. Our results suggest a linear developmental trajectory with 6-year-olds significantly succeeding in picture selection and consistently looking at the metaphorical target even after question onset.