Young children's comprehension of similarities underlying metaphor

The comprehension of similarity by forty-eight 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds was investigated using a set of binary choice tasks. These tasks were composed of contrasting concepts that were to be matched to conceptually related target stimuli on the basis of relationships underlying object/personality metaphor, color/personality metaphor, concrete metaphor, taxonomic similarity, and functional association. The youngest children were able to comprehend each of the metaphoric and nonmetaphoric relationships, and this ability improved with age.This article is based on the doctoral dissertation of Victor Broderick (Broderick, 1985),The Development of Metaphor Comprehension in Preschool Children, at the Pennsylvania State University. The author would like to thank the directors and instructors of the Child Development Council of Center County, Childspace, OEO, Punkin Patch, Garden of Children, the Jewish Community Center, Our Children's Center, and Parkforest Montessori School for their cooperation and helpful assistance in recruiting subjects and collecting data on the premises. I would also like to thank David Palermo, Keith Nelson, Robert Seibel, Donka Farkas, Philip Prinz, and Francis Whaley for their input and advice. Finally, I would like to thank those 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds who sat patiently for as much as 60 min, answering unusual questions about monkeys, chocolate, and burned out light bulbs.