The developmental importance of motion information in perceiving and describing metaphoric similarity

The perceptual basis of metaphor was investigated using films of natural objects and events. The subjects were 5-, 7-, and 10-year-old children and adults, 16 at each age. The stimuli were 10 triads of films, for example, a ballerina spinning, a top spinning, and a ballerina leaping. There were 3 possible pairs of scenes: the metaphoric (e.g., ballerina spinning, top spinning), the literal (e.g., ballerina spinning, ballerina leaping), and the control (e.g., ballerina leaping, top spinning). Half the triads were stationary objects, the other half moving objects (i.e., events). Subjects were asked to pair scenes and talk about them. The mean frequency of metaphoric pairings increased with age, literal pairings increased from ages 5 to 7, and control pairings were consistently infrequent. Event triads elicited more metaphoric pairings than object triads, and the frequency of event metaphoric pairings was equal to event literal pairings at a younger age. Figurative language increased in frequency from ages 5 to 10, and figurative words more often referred to action in the event than in the object triads. It was concluded that motion information made metaphoric similarity relatively easy to perceive and influenced the form of descriptive metaphors.