Proverb explanation through the lifespan: a developmental study of adolescents and adults

A proverb explanation task consisting of 24 low-familiarity expressions was administered to 353 individuals ranging in age from 13 through 79 years. Half the proverbs were composed of concrete nouns ("A caged bird longs for the clouds") and half were composed of abstract nouns ("Humility often gains more than pride"). The task was designed to examine how patterns of language growth in adults compare to those observed in adolescents. It also served as a tool for examining the "metasemantic hypothesis," the view that complex semantic units, such as proverbs, are learned through active analysis of the words they contain. Performance on the task improved markedly during adolescence and into early adulthood. It reached a plateau during the 20s, remained stable during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and began a slight decline during the 60s that reached statistical significance during the 70s. Concrete proverbs were easier to explain than abstract proverbs for adolescents and for adults in their 20s, but the two proverb types did not differ for adults in their 30s and older. Thus, the metasemantic hypothesis was supported for adolescents and young adults. For the adults, performance on the proverb explanation task was related to the number of years of formal education they had completed.