A study of children's ability to translate figurative speech across four grade levels indicates that most third graders could correctly translate metaphors and dual function words but that proverbs were not generally understood until the seventh grade. (Editor)

In order to investigate the nature of metaphoric generation, comprehension, and appreciation, 8 different groups of 16 subjects were asked to rate each of 20 terms within each of 8 categories (United States historical figures, modern world leaders, mammals, birds, fish, airplanes, land vehicles, and ships) on 21 scales such as "warlike…

A study explored the role of analogy in enhancing the ability of 63 gifted children (ages 5-6) to paraphrase metaphors. Children who were instructed in analogies solved more analogies and offered more parallel explanations than those who did not have analogy instruction. They also correctly interpreted more metaphors. (Author/CR)

The question of what constitutes a minimal appropriate context for understanding a metaphor is examined through the relative effectiveness of three types of contextual priming for metaphor comprehension. All three produced immediate and automatic metaphor comprehension. The use of context to disambiguate both literal and nonliteral speech messages…

Hitherto, theories of similarity have restricted themselves to judgments of what might be called literal similarity. A central thesis of this paper is that a complete account of similarity needs also to be sensitive to nonliteralness, or metaphoricity, an aspect of similarity statements that is most evident in similes, but that actually underlies…

A total of 411 elementary school children seven to twelve years old read short prose passages and selected the most appropriate continuation sentence from four alternatives. The completion sentences were constructed so that the correct (target) response involved either an explicit (simile) or an implicit (metaphor) metaphorical comparison. It was…

Defining metaphor as "seeing a concept from one class in terms of a concept from another class," a study was devised that analyzed the degree to which two concepts occupy dissimilar positions with respect to their category or domain (within-domain distance), and the degree to which categories themselves are dissimilar (between-domain distance).…

Presents results of a study of fifth-grade students' ability to interpret novel metaphors and similes when provided with a subschemata of semantic attributes. (AEA)

Reviews theory and research on the use and effectiveness of metaphors, analogies, and models as instructional tools. Concludes that the use of metaphors and other figurative devices promotes the acquisition of new knowledge. Suggests possible design and use of instructional metaphors. (FMW)

A study was conducted to examine some of the cognitive and linguistic factors that influence metaphor comprehension in young children. Presupposing that (1) the similarities between the topic and the vehicle in a metaphor comprise the metaphor's ground, (2) salience is the degree of prominence of a characteristic in relation to a concept, and (3)…

In the essays contained in this volume, philosophers, psychologists, linguists, and educators raise questions about the viability of the traditional distinction between the literal and the metaphorical. The essays reflect important parallel developments in the fields represented but also illustrate a convergence of approaches to a common problem…

The three dominant views of metaphor emphasize comparison anomaly or dissimilarity, and a somewhat vaguer notion that combines aspects of the first two, called conceptual interaction. In all three views, a central consideration as to the aptness of the metaphor is the similarity of the objects linked by the metaphor (tenor and vehicle). The exact…

When the descriptive interpretations that sixth and eighth graders provided for metaphors selected from fifth-grade readers were examined in a Piagetian framework, the poorest interpretations showed characteristics of concrete and pre-operational thought, while the best interpretations showed characteristics of formal operational thought. (RL)

Explores some of the suggestive research on metaphor and extrapolates some general implications for second language learning and teaching. Communicating effectively in a second language involves one's ability to metaphorize. Moreover, the understanding of metaphor makes the learning process more meaningful for the student. (CB)

Investigates the hypothesis that, in the case of individual similes, bits of lexical information, or word knowledge, are predictably and absolutely essential to the resolution of similes. (HOD)