Although metaphors are essential tools in everyday communication and educational settings, the literature lacks evidence of effective training tools to promote metaphor comprehension in typical development. Grounding in theoretical pragmatics, we developed a novel metaphor comprehension training (MetaCom) for school-age children that focuses on…

This study involved fourth grade children as co-researchers of their engaged, aesthetic reading experience. As members of the "Readers as Researchers Club," they documented their engagement with text--how they create, enter, and sustain the story world. The children, who self-identified as avid readers, explored the activities central to their…

The aim of the present study was to investigate idiom comprehension in school-age Italian children with different reading comprehension skills. According to our hypothesis, the level of a child's text comprehension skills should predict his/her ability to understand idiomatic meanings. Idiom comprehension in fact requires children to go beyond a…