Investigating cognitive difficulties in children’s metaphoric perception: an inhibition-of-return approach

We examined whether children across grades possess the cognitive difficulties in metaphoric perception. With the inhibition-of-return approach, we compared the differences (i.e., vehicle, tenor, and ground) of 15 metaphoric expressions presented by young children in Grade 2, Grade 4, and Grade 6 in the elementary school. We measured the process of identifying metaphoric expressions (i.e., speaking out vehicle, tenor, and ground of each metaphoric expression) and the attentive questionnaire (focusing on the psychological status). Results show that children across different grades present apparently different cognitive difficulties in vehicle, tenor, and ground, although the discrepancies are not significant in word, idiom, sentence pattern. Additionally, with the process of metaphoric perception, children’s performance are not saliently affected by duration of the time limit. Ultimately, there can be a good paradigm for strategically identifying metaphoric perception for children across grades. Thus, this boosts the improvement of children’s metaphoric perception and subsequently adjust the cognitive difficulties in it.