We investigated the association between individual differences in metaphor understanding and Theory of Mind (ToM) in typically developing children. We distinguished between two types of metaphors and created a Physical and Mental Metaphors task, echoing a similar distinction for ToM. Nine-year-olds scored lower than older age-groups in ToM as well…

The main goal of the present study was to characterise the pragmatic abilities of French children with cerebral palsy through their understanding of irony and other people's mental states. We predicted that children with cerebral palsy would have difficulty understanding false-belief and ironic remarks, due to the executive dysfunction that…

Two experiments investigated the processing and appreciation of double grounding, a form of intentional ambiguity often used in the construction of headlines. For example, in "Russia takes the froth off Carlsberg results," the key element, "takes the froth off," is significant both metaphorically, where it refers to the…

The dissertation presents a theory of semantics and pragmatics for both language and vision. I focus on sentences including proper names, descriptions, and attitude report verbs, and on the Necker cube. I propose the Open Instruction Theory (OIT), according to which the linguistic meaning of a sentence and the semantic contribution of visual…