The hypothesized relationship between an individual's age, educational background, and ability to understand aspects of semantic ambiguity was investigated in this study. The 90 subjects included ten students in each of grades two, four, six, eight, and ten, as well as ten college undergraduates, ten graduate students, ten high school graduates,…

A multiple choice Metaphor Preferences Test was administered to 138 preschool through college subjects to determine the role of a metaphor's ground in determining a metaphor's appeal, and to document the evolution of preferences for different types of grounds. Ground is the common property that links the two terms of a metaphor (topic and…