THE RELATIONSHIP OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE AND CONCRETE OPERATIONS TO METAPHOR COMPREHENSION IN SEVEN- AND EIGHT-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
Abstract
This study proposed that in order to understand metaphors, children must have a repository of world knowledge and have developed concrete operational reasoning. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate the relationship of world knowledge and concrete operations to metaphor comprehension in 7- and 8-year-old children. The subjects in the study were 82 English-speaking 7- and 8-year-old children from the population of a northeastern school district. Forty 7 year olds and forty-two 8 year olds were tested. The sample also included 40 females and 42 males. World knowledge was measured by the Information and Vocabulary subtests of the WISC-R, concrete operational reasoning was measured by the Concept Assessment Kit--Conservation, and metaphor comprehension was measured by the Pollio and Pollio Test of Metaphor Comprehension. The data were analyzed by a multiple regression analysis which entailed the prior calculation of the means, standard deviations, and first-order correlations of the scores obtained by subjects on the three test instruments. The results indicated that there was a significant relationship between metaphor comprehension and world knowledge and between metaphor comprehension and concrete operations. The findings also indicated that there was a significant relationship between metaphor comprehension and an optimum combination of the variables, world knowledge and concrete operations. Therefore, both world knowledge and concrete operations were good predictors of metaphor comprehension. However, the optimum combination of both independent variables, according to the results, were the better predictors of metaphor comprehension in 7- and 8-year-old elementary school children.
Subject Area
Language arts
Recommended Citation
BLOCK, STEPHEN, "THE RELATIONSHIP OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE AND CONCRETE OPERATIONS TO METAPHOR COMPREHENSION IN SEVEN- AND EIGHT-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN" (1983). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8326162.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8326162
