Acceso usuarios
Christelle Franquart-Declercq, Marie-Dominique Gineste
Our aim in this paper is to review the experimental research on metaphor comprehension in children. We present data based on the type of task in which children are engaged, including explanation of metaphors, multiple-choice questionnaires (choosing a paraphrase or a word congruent with the metaphor), acting out stories and memory tasks. Choice of task depends to a great extent on the author's theoretical position ; three main conceptions can be distinguished in this research area. According to the first of these, based on piagetian theory, the development of the comprehension of metaphors may be ascribed to a change in cognitive structures, such as class inclusion. A second position holds that the difficulties children have in understanding metaphor are due to lack of knowledge. Finally, a third viewpoint emphasizes the process of projection between concepts that is hypothesized to occur in metaphor comprehension. Both factors, methodological and theoretical, partly determine the heterogeneity of the experimental data : children are sometimes said to understand metaphors as early as the age of four, whereas other observers claim that understanding is not achieved before the age of seven, due to the development of metalinguistic abilities. However, it is only fully mastered after the age of ten, once the child has a sufficient grasp of language to understand metaphor in all its manifestations.
