A psycholinguistic study of comprehension of emotional and non-emotional metaphors in two types of conventional and novel ones among Persian-speaking children

The present study examines the comprehension of conventional (familiar) metaphors and novel (unfamiliar) metaphors with both emotional and non-emotional contents among a sample of healthy, normal Persian-speaking children aged 4 to 12 years.

The present study is designed to explore the extent and manner of the development of conceptual metaphor comprehension at different childhood ages, particularly in preschool and elementary school children. In this investigation, 113 healthy Persian-speaking children aged 4 to 12 years, without any language, hearing, or cognitive impairments, and all right-handed, participated. The participants were assessed in one session by responding to questionnaires containing multiple-choice questions (32 questions) and descriptive questions (8 questions) across four groups: conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors and novel non-emotional metaphors.

After analyzing the statistical data from the tests at both the descriptive and inferential levels and evaluating the descriptive and inferential indices, the results showed that Persian-speaking children begin to understand abstract concepts and conceptual metaphors from the age of 4 (or even earlier). Additionally, older children demonstrated a better and more extensive comprehension of complex metaphorical expressions compared to younger children. The empirical results of the study indicated that, based on the designed tests, there was no significant difference in the comprehension of various types of conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors among Persian-speaking children aged 4 to 12 years.

According to the results of this study, the ability to understand metaphors in children follows a developmental trajectory, with metaphor comprehension improving as children age. Additionally, there is no significant difference in the comprehension of emotional and non-emotional metaphors, whether they are conventional or novel, among Persian-speaking children.