Interpreting Physical vs. Mental Metaphors: the role of theory mind in school aged children
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1
University of Pavia, Department of Brain and Bhavioural Sciences, Italy
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2
Centro di Neurocognizione, Epistemologia e Sintassi teorica, IUSS, Italy
Understanding metaphors requires to go beyond the literal meaning and to infer the speaker’s intentions using the context as a key (Carston, 2010). Classical literature on this issue has either examined how the understanding of metaphors changes in typically developing children depending on the type of metaphors (Winner, Rosenstiel, & Gardner, 1976) or focused on the role that Theory of Mind (ToM) skills, i.e., the ability to infer mental states, have for understanding metaphors in autistic children (Happé, 1193).
In a shift from this traditional literature, the present study investigated the associations between individual differences in metaphor understanding and in ToM in typically developing children. Echoing the literature in the ToM field, which highlighted the difference between making an inference on mental rather than on physical states, in the present study we considered two types of metaphors: physical and psychological metaphors. In order to understand physical metaphors (e.g., “Dancers are butterflies”), children need to infer a physical aspect of the metaphor’s topic, while in psychological metaphors (“Daddy is a volcano”) children need to make inferences about mental states of the metaphor’s topic.
This study has two main goals. The first was to investigate similarities and differences in developmental changes of the two focus constructs: metaphor understanding and ToM in children from 9 to 12. The second was to examine associations between individual differences in ToM and in psychological vs. physical metaphors. In doing so, we also controlled for children’s receptive language and working memory, which are known be related to both metaphors (Hong & Yim, 2014; Norbury, 2005) and ToM (Happé, 1995; Lecce, Bianco, Devine, & Hughes, 2017).
We recruited 218 participants, ranging in age from 9 to 13 years. The sample was made up of four age groups: sixty-two 9-year olds (33 female, M age = 9.51, SD = .28, age range: 9.0 - 9.98), forty-eight 10-year olds (21 female, M age = 10.44, SD = .26, age range: 10 - 10.99), fifty-one 11-year olds (26 female, M age = 11.43, SD = .27, age range: 11.02 - 11.98), and fifty-six 12-year olds (20 female, M age = 12.37, SD = .22, age range: 12.07 - 12.86). Participants were tested for their verbal ability, measured through the Italian version of the Vocabulary subtest of the Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) (Rubini & Rossi, 1982), working memory, measured using the Backward Digit Span task from the Italian version of the WISC-R (Orsini, 1997), and ToM, using the Strange stories (Happé, 1994). We also administered participants a set of 6 metaphors that followed the prototypical structure “X is Y”, in which X is the topic and Y is the vehicle of the metaphor. Three metaphors referred to physical attributes and three referred to mental attributes. The physical metaphors were: 1) “Dancers are butterflies”, 2) “Climbers are squirrels”, and 3) “Players are elephants”. The mental metaphors were: 4) “Soldiers are lions”, 5) “Daddy is a volcano”, and 6) “The teacher is icicle”. Metaphors 1, 2, 3, and 4 were taken from (Bambini et al., 2013); metaphor 5 was adapted from (Pinto, Melogno & Iliceto, 2006). Children were asked to explain the meaning conveyed by each metaphor, after an example item considered together with the examiner. Their answers were coded according to the level of accuracy, defined as the ability to articulate the link between the topic and the vehicle, and interpretation, defined as being either physical or mental. This distinction allowed us to take a fine grain of analysis and focus on the mechanisms of metaphor interpretation rather than simply on the ability to understand it.
Our findings showed that 9-year-olds perform worse than the other age-groups (who did not differ significantly one from another) in ToM, F(3, 213) = 7.09, p < 0.001, η2p = .09, and in the interpretation of mental, F(3, 213) = 3.59, p = 0.01, η2p = .04, but not physical metaphors, F(3, 213) = 1.67, p = 0.18, η2p = .02. These findings fit with existing literature on ToM (Lecce et al., 2017) and metaphors (Winner et al., 1976) and show a parallel in the developmental timing of these two abilities, thus suggesting a relationship between ToM and metaphor understanding. Such a view is also supported by results of correlations analyses that showed how, independently of verbal ability and working memory, 9-years-olds (but not older children) that are better in ToM are also better in interpreting psychological, r(57) = .34, p = .008, but not physical, metaphors.
Taken together, the results of the present study suggest that the link between metaphor comprehension and ToM is not general, but rather is stronger for some, but not other types of metaphors and changes across development, being more evident in early rather later childhood.
The present study is innovative as it is the first that examines the associations between ToM and metaphor interpretation using a fine grain of analysis with a combined attention to developmental changes and individual differences in typically developing children. Crucially, our study is also the first study that distinguished psychological vs. physical metaphors in relations to ToM. Such a distinction proved key, as when properties of the encoded concepts in metaphors refer to mental aspects, ToM skills are likely to play a stronger role. This does not mean that ToM is involved only in mental metaphors, but, rather, that the ToM load differs depending on the nature of the metaphor to interpret. This seems to be true in early but not late childhood in accordance with Karmiloff-Smits’s model of progressive modularization and specialization of cognitive skills (Karmiloff-Smith, 1995). Of course, future studies involving younger of children are needed to properly test this account. Future research should also investigate the nature of the relationship between ToM and the understanding of mental vs. physical metaphors across time and using a bigger pool of metaphors. Such a design would indeed enable to understand if ToM promotes the development of pragmatics or if, vice versa, pragmatics predicts the development of ToM.
Acknowledgements
The work was supported by the MIUR (Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca) PRIN (Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale) 2015 project “The Interpretative Brain: Understanding and Promoting Pragmatic Abilities across Lifespan and in Mental Illness,” project code 201577HA9M, awarded to the first and last authors.
References
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Keywords:
metaphor,
theory of mind (ToM),
middle childhood,
Experimental pragmatics,
inferences
Conference:
XPRAG.it 2018 - Second Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference, Pavia, Italy, 30 May - 1 Jun, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Poster or Oral
Topic:
Experimental Pragmatics
Citation:
Lecce
S,
Ronchi
L,
Del Sette
P,
Bischetti
L and
Bambini
V
(2018). Interpreting Physical vs. Mental Metaphors: the role of theory mind in school aged children.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
XPRAG.it 2018 - Second Experimental Pragmatics in Italy Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.73.00004
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Received:
15 May 2018;
Published Online:
14 Dec 2018.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Serena Lecce, University of Pavia, Department of Brain and Bhavioural Sciences, Pavia, Italy, slecce@unipv.it