%0 Journal Article
%A Pouscoulous, Nausicaa
%A Tomasello, Michael
%+ Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society
%T Early birds: Metaphor understanding in 3-year-olds : 
%G eng
%U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0005-E172-C
%R 10.1016/j.pragma.2019.05.021
%D 2020
%8 21.06.2020
%* Review method: peer-reviewed
%X To assess children's cognitive capacities to understand (rather than explain or paraphrase) metaphors, we investigated how 3-year-olds (n = 36; 3;0–3;3) fare with novel metaphors corresponding to their world knowledge and linguistic competences using a behavioural choice paradigm. In a game, participants had to give the experimenter one of two objects referred to by a metaphorical expression. Unlike what previous literature suggests, our results indicate that 3-year-olds are able to understand novel metaphors that are appropriate for their vocabulary and world knowledge, based on action measures rather than metalinguistic responses. We discuss how factors other than incompetence with pragmatic inferencing can explain difficulties with metaphor comprehension.
%K Language development, Metaphor, Pragmatic development
%J Journal of Pragmatics
%V 156
%& 160
%P 160 - 167
%@ 0378-2166