The aim of the study was to follow the implicit patterns in children's responses to metaphor describing human by means of a name of animal. The main problem in present study was: which traits of topic (human) would be spontaneously used by children from three age groups? The study followed a quasi-experimental design. The subjects were 77 children from three age groups: 5;6-6;0, 8;0-8;6, 9;6-10;0. The dependent variable: the level of comprehension of 18 metaphors with vehicles from the animal domain and one topic - human. The variable was measured through individual Piagetian interviews. The study confirmed the hypothesis that the ability to activate metaphorical thinking in order to describe human attributes increases with age, with a turning point around 8 year of life. The traits mentioned by subjects could be classified into five categories: unambiguous evaluations, physical features, behavior, behavioral traits, dispositions (intellectual, emotional, communion) and agency. Older children assigned more human dispositional traits, thoughts and preferences to the objects of metaphors. Younger ones often focused on the physical features of animals. With age, the tendency to give positive evaluations to the objects of metaphors increases.
The main goal was to explore a relationship between selected cognitive processes – a verbal analytical reasoning, a nonverbal analytical reasoning, a generalisation, and a metaphor comprehension in a Slovak sample. Our hypothesis is that metaphor comprehension is closely connected to other cognitive processes, for empirical investigation we chose an analytical reasoning and a generalisation. In a process of metaphor, we seek common shared attributes and meanings between two different aspects, objects. Thus, important are processes of analytical reasoning, categorization and induction. A fact that analytical reasoning is closely connected to metaphor comprehension verifies various research f. e. Castillo (1998), Johnson, Henley (1992), De Barros et al (2010). Only a limited work and investigation has been done in Slovak psychology regarding the metaphor topic, so we aspire to contribute to progress in this area and confirm findings of research with a tool of own provenience in a Slovak sample. This research was conducted on the sample of university students of the humanities. A sample was selected to control age, the field of study and associated cognitive variables and level of education as well. The sample was gender unbalanced, which is partly a matter of disproportion of gender in this field of study. The selected cognitive processes - verbal analytical reasoning, nonverbal analytical reasoning and generalisation were measured by means of the standardised intelligence test ISA-S. Our research showed that in process of metaphor comprehension the most important is verbal analytical reasoning, more than generalisation. This research suggests an additional perspective on cognitive processes in the context of metaphor comprehension. As a limitation of research, we consider a relatively limited possibility to apply research findings on broader population and relatively small amount of explored cognitive processes.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.