At what age do we acquire the ability to interpret metaphors?

In a new study, children between the ages of 3 and 9 have been tested for their ability to interpret metaphors.

The study was carried out by a team led by Isabel Martín, a researcher at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

The Lindy Lab research group at the UPV/EHU examined the reactions of 80 children aged 3 to 9.

The authors of the study have concluded that full interpretation of metaphors is achieved from the age of 6. Despite this, the results indicate that the ability to intuit non-literal meanings begins to develop earlier. “It can be seen that at earlier ages they understand figurative language to a certain extent, but they do not master it and their capacity is limited. At 6, they correctly identify its meaning and, it is later, around 10, when they seem to be able to explain metaphors,” explains Isabel Martín.

The results of this research could provide new and revealing data for the thesis that the doctoral student is writing on the understanding of metaphorical language in people with both typical development and autism spectrum disorder, with the aim of comparing what happens in both groups and being able to better understand the minds of people with autism.

Researcher Isabel Martin. (Photo: Nuria González / UPV/EHU)

Isabel Martín explains that in order to reach these conclusions, she and her colleagues have used an innovative research methodology: “We have initiated a new methodological trend in experimental psychology and psycholinguistics that has allowed us to draw more nuanced conclusions than existing work.” It should be noted that there are various studies that have analysed this issue, but their results are mixed. The group from the University of the Basque Country has managed to provide more complete information to the scientific debate by combining two different methodologies in a way that had not been done before.

On the one hand, they have used the image selection methodology. They have carried out an experiment in which each boy or girl listens to an audio in which a metaphor is dictated (for example: “Grasshoppers jump a lot; that boy is a grasshopper”), while they visualize four images (a boy jumping, a boy running, a beetle and a grasshopper jumping). Then, the participants must choose the drawing that represents the message they have heard (the boy jumping). “This methodology has allowed us to know that the 6-year-old participants understand figurative meanings, because it is at that age when it is clearly seen that they choose the appropriate representation,” says the researcher.

However, the selection of images does not provide information on how each participant processed the messages and to what extent they considered other options. To find out these details, the research team from the University of the Basque Country used each exercise to also analyse their eye movements.

While they look at the images, listen to the auditory stimulus and choose the final drawing, an infrared camera measures the movements of the eyes; both the saccades (rapid movements of the eyeball that are imperceptible to the naked eye) and the trajectories and fixations on each image. Isabel Martín explains that this data allows us to know how they have processed what they have seen and heard: “The camera captures how their eyes have moved from one image to another and gives us information about what is happening inside their heads before choosing the drawing they consider correct: if they have had difficulties, what options they have hesitated between… Since the image they finally select is the result of a decision, which has followed an entire process.” The recording of eye movements allows them to look into that process itself and to qualify the results obtained through the selection of images.

It is precisely thanks to the combination of both methodologies that they have been able to know that, although children under 6 years of age do not clearly interpret metaphors because they select the correct image less frequently, they do have a certain intuition to detect figurative meanings. And it is through eye tracking that they have detected that they have hesitated when choosing the drawing. “When they are very clear about what the phrase means, they do not think about it any more and fix their gaze on the option they consider correct. But when they have doubts, they look elsewhere. And that is what we have been able to perceive in children of early ages,” the researcher specifies.

The study is titled “That kid is a grasshopper! Metaphor development from 3 to 9 years of age”. It has been published in the academic journal Journal of Child Language. (Source: UPV/EHU)