Metaphor, symbolic play, and logical thought in early childhood

Development of the ability to understand diverse types of metaphor was examined in terms of play context (symbolic vs. constructive-object play), Piagetian operational level (preoperational vs. concrete-operational), and medium of presentation (pictures vs. words). Forty 4-year-olds and 80 6-year-olds (40 preoperational, 40 concrete-operational) were presented with six different types of metaphorical relationships (color, shape, physiognomic, cross-modal, psychological-physical, and taxonomic matches) in both pictures and words in a match-to-sample design. Results indicated that (a) constructive-object play, rather than symbolic play, facilitated the understanding of perceptual and taxonomic metaphor, suggesting differences in early styles of metaphoric usage; (b) despite previous findings, the study failed to replicate a relationship between operativity and metaphoric understanding; and (c) younger children did significantly better in the pictorial medium, suggesting a picture-superiority effect for more perceptible metaphorical relations (perceptual and physiognomic), whereas older children showed a word-superiority effect for more conceptual metaphors (psychological-physical and taxonomic).