How children understand idioms in discourse

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Children often interpret figurative language, such as idioms, literally.
• Prior research indicates a developmental lag in understanding non-literal language.
• Idiomatic competence is crucial for full language acquisition and social interaction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if rich informational contexts improve children's comprehension of idiomatic expressions.
• To compare children's comprehension and production abilities of idioms.
• To determine the age at which children can differentiate literal and figurative language.

Main Methods:

• First and third graders participated in comprehension tasks involving narratives.
• Experiments presented idioms within contexts biased towards either figurative or literal meanings.
• A third experiment assessed children's ability to produce idioms.

Main Results:

• Informative contexts significantly enhanced children's perception of idiomatic meanings, even in seven-year-olds.
• Children demonstrated a greater ability to comprehend idioms than to produce them.
• Results suggest children can recognize that language can be both literal and figurative.

Conclusions:

• Rich informational environments facilitate the development of idiomatic competence in children.
• Comprehension of idioms develops earlier than production.
• Children possess an emerging awareness of the dual nature (literal and figurative) of language.