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Developmental Studies of Perception andMetaphor: The Twain Shall MeetCathy H. DentPublished online: 17 Nov 2009.

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METAPHOR AND SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY, 2(1), 53-71 Copyright o 1987 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Developmental Studies of Perception and Metaphor:

The Twain Shall Meet

Cathy H. Dent University of North Carolina

A model is presented to guide investigation of the developmental relationships among different verbal and nonverbal abilities related to metaphor. It specifies the nonverbal context supporting children's use of metaphors and also details what type of nonverbal information children are likely to detect and talk about figuratively. A general statement of theoretical orientation, characteristics of metaphor and related abilities, and the development of metaphor abilities are discussed, focusing on children's understanding of naturally occurring kinds and their detection of similarity across kinds (metaphoric similarity). The theo- retical and empirical implications of the model are considered, along with de- velopmental studies based on the model. These show that the nature of the per- ceptual information available influences the likelihood of children's detecting the similarity of objects different in kind, as well as the likelihood and form of figurative descriptions. In addition, it has been shown that perceptual experi- ence influences the recall of related metaphors when the visual information for metaphoric similarity is no longer present.

A 3-year-old girl said to her father while they were watching a burst of fire- works on the Fourth of July, "Daddy, they'reflowers!" A 6-year-old said, after having been instructed about playing records on a turntable, about a figure skater skating in a circle on one leg, "Mom, he could be a needle on a record." These young children's metaphors were unremarked; they were smoothly understood, accepted, and responded to by their parents during conversation. And yet the ability to note similarities in the midst of so many dissimilarities, that is, t o see similarities across objects different in kind, is a remarkable perceptual/cognitive achievement, especially in children so

Requests for reprints should be sent to Cathy H. Dent, Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056.

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54 DENT

young. We know very little about children's understanding of naturally occurring kinds, their ability to detect similarity across kinds, and to draw on that similarity to speak figuratively. To investigate the relationships among these different verbal and nonverbal abilities, we need a model that specifies the nonverbal context supporting children's use of metaphors to communi- cate and also details what type of nonverbal information children are likely to detect and talk about figuratively. Such a model is presented in this article, along with examples of empirical studies related to the model. After a general statement of theoretical orientation, characteristics of metaphor and the abilities required to use metaphor are given; then a characterization of the de- velopment of metaphor abilities is provided. The theoretical and empirical implications of the model are discussed, followed by examples of research based on the model.

THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

The theoretical approach described herein represents an intersection of three very different areas of research: (a) functional theories of perceptual development (cf. Gibson, 1980), (b) functional theories of language develop- ment (cf. Bates & MacWhinney, 1982), and (c) pragmatic studies of figura- tive language. Perceptual theory based on the idea that organisms detect in- formation allowing them to act adaptively in their natural environment is now being developed rapidly for activities such as walking, reaching, and searching (e.g., Von Hofsten, 1985), but has not been applied to the action of talking or responding to talk, although meaningful speech is a pervasive and crucial aspect of all natural human environments. On the other hand, func- tional theories of language, which state that the forms of language are ac- quired to carry out communicative functions, have led to very detailed stud- ies of the natural context or situations of human speech (i.e., the pragmatics of language). But these theories have involved very little work on how people (young or not)perceive the contexts of their speech- how they detect the in- formation that is relevant to using or comprehending language. Thus, the specific functional relations between the structure of the physical context and the form of utterances used in or about that context has received little atten- tion up to this point, whereas social functions of speech have been analyzed extensively (e.g., Ochs & Schieffelin, 1979). These two very different theoret- ical approaches, functional perception and functional language theories, can be combined into a fruitful foundation for the study of language use by thinking of talking as perceptually guided action (cf. Verbrugge, 1984). Talk- ing about objects is guided by the information the speaker detects about those objects just as reaching is an action guided by the perceptual informa- tion for the location of an object in relation to the organism reaching for the

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STUDIES OF PERCEPTION AND METAPHOR 55

object. Speech is adapted to the events, physical or social, that it is about; otherwise, communication about objects and events in the world would not be possible. Objects and events can be perceived and used to guide one's ac- tion, both verbal and nonverbal. More specifically, information in the ambi- ent array specifies the objects, events, and surfaces in the environment, but does not specify or uniquely determine an utterance about that environment. Instead that information is used by a speaker to guide verbal action, includ- ing describing, naming, and speaking figuratively. The perceptual approach is fruitful in developing a model of metaphoric language in particular, be- cause metaphor is a type of language closely related to perceiving concrete common objects; through referring to this type of object in metaphors, speakers communicate insights, draw attention to resemblances, and draw on shared experiences with the listener.

The model is based on a pragmatic approach to figurative language devel- opment in that language is analyzed in relation to the context of its use. Con- text affects a speaker only to the extent that the speaker knows about the so- cial and nonsocial features of the context bearing on what he or she is saying. Pragmatic studies of language acquisition have focused on the social context of speech, but the perceptual/cognitive understanding speakers have of the physical context of their utterance is just as important in shaping an utterance as understanding of social context (e.g., Clark & Marshall, 198 1; Greenfield & Dent, 1982). Pragmatic studies of the development of figurative language must delineate children's abilities to understand kinds of objects (see Keil, 1979), detect resemblances across such kinds, and communicate about the re- semblances figuratively. In the next section, a model of metaphor is sketched by detailing both nonverbal and verbal aspects of metaphor along with the requisite abilities that children must acquire as they develop in their use of figurative language.

Characteristics of Metaphor and Related Nonverbal Abilities

One kind of figurative language is metaphor, wherein a word or phrase, the vehicle, is applied to an object or concept, the topic, that it does not literally denote, but that bears some resemblance to the object denoted literally as topic; thus there is a ground for the statement. Vehicle terms almost always represent concrete real-world objects or actions and the ground or similarity between topic and vehicle is often concrete (see Dent, 1984; Verbrugge, 1977, 1980). Further, topic and vehicle terms represent objects or actions that are different in kind; metaphors cannot be formed about objects that are the same kind of thing without bringing in a third term as the vehicle. All these characteristics of metaphor help guide our investigation of children's perceptual/cognitive and verbal abilities that allow them to use and compre-

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hend metaphorical language. Thus, although the traditional treatment of metaphor in literary criticism (e.g., Burke, 1969), anthropology (e.g., Henle, 1972), philosophy (e.g., Sacks, 1978), and psycholinguistics (e.g., Ortony, 1979) has not included a central role for perception, the developmental study of figurative language in psychology has led to the use, at least, of nonverbal materials (e.g., Gentner, 1977; Honeck, Voegtle, & Sowry, 1978). This work has opened the door, in light of current focus on pragmatics, to the study of language in contexts of use, to investigations of the perceivability of meta- phorical similarity, and to the power of metaphors to draw one's attention to resemblances across domains.

In figurative utterances, as in any utterance, the topic and comment have referents (including actions and abstract entities as referents), but certain characteristics of the vehicle term distinguish metaphor utterances from lit- eral utterances. The vehicle term in almost all metaphors refers to concrete objects or actions that have been directly perceived by the speaker and the ve- hicle always entails a double reference- that is, simultaneous reference to the literally denoted object (although this object is usually not present) and tem- porary (within-an-utterance) reference to the topic object - resulting in an ut- terance that requires knowledge of one domain to be used in understanding a different kind of domain @lack, 1977). The ground or similarity between the topic object and the vehicle object is real and is experienced (Dent, 1981, 1984; Verbrugge, 1980). Thus the development of competence with figura- tive language includes developing the nonverbal ability to understand kinds, and the ability to perceive similarity across kinds. Metaphors are about do- mains of objects, not individual objects; that is, both topic and vehicle refer- ence groups or categories of objects or events, as has been shown empirically for adults (Kelly &Keil, this issue; Tourangeau & Sternberg, 1981; Verbrugge & McCarrell, 1977). The idea of naturally occurring kinds (Mill, 1884) is use- ful in determining principles for distinguishing literal from metaphorical similarity. A naturally occurring kind is a class of existing objects that have the same nature or character, although we cannot exhaustively enumerate the properties the objects have in common. Inasmuch as vehicles always refer- ence real objects and not a particular object, they reference naturally occurring kinds. One further requirement must be met for metaphorical simi- larity to obtain: The topic must be a different kind of object than the vehicle. Metaphors cannot be made about objects that are literally alike-of the same kind-or about objects that are different in kind but share only a similarity that does not include the properties that make it a member of its kind. Mill (1884) wrote:

By a kind . . . , we mean those classes which are distinguished from all others not by one or a few definite properties, but by an unknown multitude of them;

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STUDIES OF PERCEPTION AND METAPHOR 57

the combination of properties on which the class is grounded being a mere index to an indefinite number of distinctive attributes. The class horse is a kind, be- cause the things which agree in possessing the characters by which we recognize a horse, agree in a great number of properties, as we know, and, it cannot be doubted, in many more we don't know . . . But a combination of properties which does not give evidence of the existence of any other independent peculiar- ities does not constitute a kind. White horse, therefore, is not a kind, because horses which agree in whiteness do not agree in anything else, except the quali- ties common to all horses, and what even may be the causes of, or effects of that particular colour . (p. 460)

Therefore, one cannot make a metaphor about a black shoe and a black horse, because even though shoes and horses are different in kind, black shoe and black horse are not kinds. Note that artefacts, although they are usually constructed for a certain purpose, fit the definition given above inasmuch as (a) there is no finite list of defining properties (nor of possible uses), (b) there are properties that index the character or nature, and (c) the artefacts occur in the natural environment. Thus, the concept of naturally occurring kinds is useful in specifying the difference between metaphorical and literal similarity and between metaphorical and literal language while capturing the fact that metaphors function by referencing real-world objects and events to com- municate.

Metaphors wherein both topic and figurative terms reference concrete objects and the ground is a purely physical resemblance such as "My lawn- mower is a wild animal" or "My cadillac is a pigY'are only one type of meta- phor. But metaphors with other types of grounds also require perceptual ex- perience to use or understand the metaphor. Some "A is By' metaphors use object vehicles to talk about social or personality characteristics of people (often called "psychological" metaphors) such as "Jenny is a jaggedpiece of glass."Here, there is a necessary emotional component to the ground, such that the speaker has some of the same feelings about Jenny as about jagged glass, but both sets of feelings are based on perceiving and experiencing. Something in Jenny's behavior - for example, facial expression or tone of voice - is perceived and causes pain. Perhaps a common emotion is impor- tant in cross-modal metaphors such as "The color is loud" or "The sound is sharp" (e.g., Wagner, Winner, Cicchetti, & Gardner, 1981), although for adults, there is some tendency for words such as loud and sharp to be polysemous (i.e., to have two completely separate meanings). For example, the word loud has one meaning that is used for domains of color, another for domains of sound, and neither of the uses is figurative, although the uses are sometimes called frozen or dead metaphors.

A second type of figurative language, whole sentence metaphors and prov- erbs, requires understanding that one concrete situation corresponds to a dif-

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ferent situation to discern the sense of the figurative statement, as in "The troops came marching in" being used to describe students entering a class- room. The topic of the sentence and the topic in the situation of the utterance are both observable, and the whole sentence functions as a figurative com- ment, or vehicle.

The greatest challenge to a perceptual theory of metaphor are the meta- phors with "abstract" topics, such as "My mind is a knife." The topic is ab- stract in the sense that it is experienced directly only by the speaker and it is precisely in such a case that the concrete and familiar nature of the vehicle ob- ject is so important. To communicate to others what one cannot directly per- ceive, a comment is made using something the listener is likely to have per- ceived previously so as to draw attention to resemblances; for example, after hearing "My mind is a knife," the listener might be more attentive to the speaker's tendency to separate objects or information into categories.

Characteristics of Metaphor and Related Verbal Abilities

The second component of competence in metaphor, knowing that words can refer figuratively, is a topic that has received little attention. Mooij (1976) provided a reference model of metaphor, but this work has yet to be used in developmental studies of figurative language. This model specifies that for novel metaphors, an important variable is the degree to which the metaphorical term precisely draws attention to its literal referent. This idea has surfaced in developmental studies only in terms of the debate on "ten- sion," or the conflict between the literal and metaphorical meanings of the ve- hicle term. Some models of metaphor development specify that the literal meaning of the metaphorical term or vehicle must be "overcome" for the term to function metaphorically (cf. Verbrugge, 1979). According to this view, children must know the literal meaning and then discard it to use or compre- hend figurative language. If one views perceptual experience as the starting point of a metaphorical utterance, then tension exists only in the sense of awareness of the many dissimilarities across unlike domains (Gardner, Winner, Bechhofer, & Wolf, 1978). The similarities or invariants across the domains are, however, real. But even when word meaning is the focus, ten- sion in the sense of "overriding" and, therefore, not using the literal sense of the vehicle, is not necessarily part of metaphor. Indeed, the opposite seems to be the case (the literal meaning of the vehicle is essential to a metaphor for the ground to be understood and for the topic to be conceptualized in terms of the vehicle). Thus, children must come to know that a word can be used to re- fer simultaneously to two objects within an utterance or section of text to use words metaphorically.

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STUDIES OF PERCEPTION AND METAPHOR 59

DEVELOPMENT OF METAPHOR ABILITIES

The understanding that objects can be different in kind and yet still be simi- lar is the foundation of figurative language abilities. The ability to detect these similarities is basic to acquiring knowledge of both the physical and the social world. If development is the process of becoming familiar with the world and thereby being able to notice what is novel (Rheingold, 1985), then the development of metaphor is based on the process of noting that a novel similarity exists between two different-kind things that are each, separately, familiar to some extent already. A differentiation theory of perceptual learn- ing (see Gibson, 1969) can explain the development of the ability to perceive similarity across different kinds of objects, which grows as children gain ex- perience with objects and groups of objects and notice similarities across groups. On this view, detection of similarity or invariance is a basic percep- tual skill and with experience in the natural environment, children come to know different kinds of objects and events. For example, children learn about trees and variations in color, leaf, size, and so forth exhibited by dif- ferent trees such as pine trees. They also learn about objects used by people for grooming or taking care of their bodies, such as hair brushes. A child might then, on seeing a pine tree, notice and remark on its resemblance to hairbrushes. As one 10-year-old put it, "They look like giant hair brushes" and the "Pine cones are snarls to be brushed out, "thus drawing on the resem- blance of pine branches and hair. Statements such as these give evidence that the child has differentiated between the naturally occurring kinds, trees and brushes, and at the same time detected a resemblance across those kinds; the latter process is often termed integration. In perception, differentiation en- tails integration. Anything that facilitates perceptual differentiation for chil- dren should also then facilitate their apprehension of invariants across classes or kinds. One aspect of the environment that has been shown to en- hance infants' accurate perception of objects is motion (Ball, 1980; Ruff, 1982) inasmuch as an object in motion provides more information about the parts and relations of parts than does a stationary object. Therefore, objects that children can experience in motion should become well understood and, importantly, when style of motion is invariant across domains, it should be more likely to be detected by young children than stationary configurations. For example, the motion similarities of a record and needle and of a skater going in a circle would be more likely to be noticed, and used as the basis of a metaphor, than a stationary skater on one leg and a needle on a stationary record. Therefore, one developmental prediction regarding children's abili- ties to detect metaphorical similarity is that motion similarity - the similarity of two different events-should be easier for children to detect and talk about metaphorically than stationary featural similarity.

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The order of acquisition of different types of metaphor is still being stud- ied, but reports of 2- and 3-year-old children using words metaphorically (Volterra, Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, & Camaioni, 1979) and understanding correspondences between human and nonhuman shapes (Gentner, 1977) and of infants responding to cross-modal similarity (Wagner et al., 1981) indicate very early facility with object-object, event-event, attribute-attribute, and personification-based metaphorical similarity.

Keil (1984) has predicted, based on results from theory and psycho- linguistic tasks, that metaphors should be comprehended in the following de- velopmental order: animate attributes given to inanimate objects (personifi- cation), followed by animal-human similarities (personification of animals), allowed by physical attributes given to nonphysical objects. If all metaphors are based on grounds that can be perceived (including perceiving one's own emotional reactions and the social relationships that exist among people), then a differentiation theory would predict that increased experience with a particular domain would lead to more differentiated perception of that do- main, making it more likely that invariants across that domain and other do- mains would be detected. Children have a great deal of experience with phys- ical objects and layouts; they also have experience of their own body so that object-object metaphors, personification of objects, and personification of animals should all be understood by young children. All of these types of metaphors are produced by children as young as 3 or 4 years, although pro- duction has not been studied experimentally as much as comprehension. On the other hand, metaphors based on complex social relations are not pro- duced until children are older. Based on a perceptual approach to metaphor and children's metaphors produced in poetry and conversation, one would predict that object-object similarities and personification would be under- stood and talked about in the preschool and early elementary years, whereas metaphors based on social relations would be understood and used only by older children who have a broader experience with social relations. The order in which different types of metaphor are produced by children as they de- velop figurative language abilities is yet to be documented. Another impor- tant developmental question is how children choose the vehicle in a meta- phor; vehicles in children's metaphors reference objects and actions they probably have had a great deal of direct experience with, but do children know or assume that their listener is also familiar with the objects or actions? A communication analysis of metaphors in children's conversation is re- quired to begin to answer this question.

THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE MODEL

The orientation of metaphor outlined above has the advantage of detailing the relationship of the nonverbal and verbal aspects of metaphor and of pro-

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viding a focus for experimental studies of metaphor production by directing attention to the perceptual information on which metaphors are based and which children come to detect. The theoretical implications of this orienta- tion are several. First, metaphorical similarity is defined as real, whether it is solely a physical resemblance or also includes emotional response compo- nents. Also, metaphorical resemblance is differentiated from literal resem- blance, not in being less real, but as existing between objects different in kind. Thus, the model relates one of the most fundamental aspects of perceiving and knowing - that is, noting resemblance - to certain types of linguistic expression, and it leads to empirical demonstrations that meta- phorical resemblance is not an artifact of language but is actual, perceptible, and independent of linguistic expression. Linguistic expression, on the other hand, is intimately dependent on real-world resemblance. Specifically, figur- ative language cannot be used to talk aptly about same-kind objects, and when metaphorical resemblance is talked about figuratively, the actual form of the utterance is affected by physical qualities of the resemblance (Dent, 1981). On the other hand, the hypothesized interaction of meaning between terms when metaphor is comprehended (Black, 1977) can take place precisely because the terms reference different kinds, thus allowing for each meaning to change the other ("Fireworks areflowers"changes our understanding of both kinds, whereas "Fireworks are explosions"changes only the meaning of fireworks) (see Dent, in press).

A further implication of the model is that metaphors, along with allego- ries, proverbs, parables, and stories, function to communicate by showing rather than telling. Consistent with this idea is the assertion that there is no fi- nite list of things a metaphor makes us notice and that metaphors lead us to see something in a new light; no proposition or set of propositions expresses all of what we see on understanding a metaphor (Davidson, 1978). Figurative language functions to communicate by showing that two things, different in kind, have some similarity. The language guides the listener's attention to the similarities, proceeding through what the listener knows well to something that is unfamiliar. Using the familiar to understand the unfamiliar is basic to learning and figurative language takes advantage of this process, but it is a special case because an object or event that is different in kind from the topic object is used to accomplish the comment. Perhaps metaphors function so well to communicate insights because similarity across kinds is salient against a background of so much dissimilarity. Thus, metaphor is like literal lan- guage in drawing on similarities, but unlike it in that the similarity is between different-kind objects, and is revealed by the metaphor rather than described by it. Metaphorical similarity can be described; that is, it can be talked about literally-one can say, Both fireworks and flowers have a radiating form. Such literal descriptions can be analyzed into propositions that can be judged true or false. Metaphors, however, are problematic on this score (cf. Black,

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1978; Davidson, 1978), with some theorists maintaining that metaphors can be judged true or false and others not. My point is that a reasonable model can be developed whereby metaphors communicate not by containing propo- sitions, but because they direct attention to characteristics of objects (con- crete or abstract) by drawing on resemblances to different-kind objects. This characterization of metaphor has the advantage of clarifying how metaphor- ical language is related to the real world and, therefore, how such language can be used to communicate about the world by both children and adults.

EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE MODEL

The empirical implications of the model are straightforward. The model guides attention to the physical properties of metaphorical resemblance and to experimental studies of the dependence of linguistic expression on the de- tection and understanding of metaphorical resemblance. Studies inspired by this view have contributed to the literatures on language acquisition, the cog- nitive aspects of pragmatics, the development of perceptual and categoriza- tion skills, and, finally, to the literature on figurative language and figurative understanding.

One way for us to know about children's abilities to use metaphor is to get them to talk about objects and events that are alike, but are not the same kind of thing. We must determine that they perceive each kind of thing accurately, and that they perceive the similarities and can talk about such similarity, es- pecially using a metaphor or simile. Thus, one strategy is to vary perceptual information and, under standard discourse conditions, study children's de- velopment of figurative language use. This strategy has guided several studies that I describe briefly below.

In figurative language research, it is important to include procedures for determining children's literal understanding of words that are later used fig- uratively (either by the child or the experimenter, depending on whether the study involves production or comprehension of figurative language). This procedure not only allows a more convincing statement that children actually use and understand figurative meaning, but it also helps to see what a child actually means in a metaphor, because it has already been determined what that child knew about the literal referent of the figurative term. Many studies of figurative language do not contrast metaphorical with literal meaning (ei- ther verbal or nonverbal), and yet this contrast is essential in determining just what figurative meaning is, and how it differs from literal meaning.

In addition to these methodological considerations the model leads to sev- eral hypotheses about children's metaphor abilities. First, only similarity across kinds should elicit metaphors, for both children and adults, but motion similarity should facilitate young children's detection of metaphor-

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STUDIES OF PERCEPTION AND METAPHOR 63

ical similarity and their use of it to guide their verbal descriptions and com- ments. Second, perceptual experience with information for similarity across kinds should facilitate children's comprehension of metaphors based on that similarity. Third, objects that combine features of different-kind objects should facilitate children's metaphor production, compared with simple or nonfused objects. And, finally, children should not sort together objects that are used in metaphors (by other chidren the same age) when they are asked to group objects that are the same kind of thing.

DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH

At this point, I describe and summarize a series of studies that have involved varying perceptual information while keeping discourse context constant, to investigate developmental functional relationships between perceptual infor- mation for different-kind similarity and the use of figurative language to talk about the objects or events displayed. In general the research has established that the nature of the perceptual information available influences the likeli- hood of detecting the similarity between objects different in kind, the likeli- hood and form of figurative descriptions, and later comprehension of meta- phors based on that similarity.

The first in the series of studies on perceptual factors in metaphor produc- tion involved showing films of natural objects and events to children ages 5, 7, and 10, and adults and eliciting descriptions of the films (Dent, 1981, 1984). I hypothesized that there should be an increase across ages in the likeli- hood of detecting metaphorical similarity (choosing the different-kind ob- jects as "going together"), but that for younger children this type of similarity would more likely be detected for events than for stationary objects. Events provide a great deal of information both about the objects participating in the actions by showing the arrangement of parts and about styles of action that can be demonstrated by quite different objects, for example, people waving and wheat waving. I hypothesized that figurative language would in- crease with age and would tend to occur in talking about different-kind simi- larity even though exactly the same questions were asked about same-kind similarity. Also, figurative language should occur more frequently to the mental fusion instruction than to the similarity/difference question if some process of interaction or transformation of topic and vehicle terms charac- terizes metaphor, rather than just a comparison of the two objects or events (for statements of these different definitions of metaphorical meaning, see Black, 1977; Ortony, 1979; Verbrugge, 1980). Triads of films were presented so that the speakers could view, simultaneously and for as long as they wanted, three separate natural scenes. The experimenter structured the dis- course about the scenes by asking the speaker (a) to name each thing, (b) to

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indicate which two were alike (which "go together"), (c) to say how those two were alike and different, and (d) to "think of the two things at the same time" and report on what came to mind. In addition to triads wherein different- kind objects were similar by virtue of participating in the same event (e.g., leaping), there were scenes that showed stationary objects. In the latter case, a stationary configuration was invariant across different-kind objects (e.g., a wrinkled face and a wrinkled apple) and not invariant across same-kind ob- jects (e.g., the wrinkled face and a smooth face).

The results showed that similarity between same-kind objects (i.e., literal similarity) was detected with high frequency at all ages, whereas similarity be- tween different-kind objects was more likely to be detected as age increased. More specifically, metaphorical similarity was detected more readily in event triads than in object triads for the younger children. Metaphorical language did occur predominantly in talking about different-kind objects at all ages and the frequency of metaphors increased with age, as did the degree of con- densation of two objects in response to the mental fusion instruction. Fur- thermore, the mental fusion instruction was more effective at all ages, in elic- iting metaphors than the comparison instruction (Dent, 1981). A more detailed look at the actual form of the metaphors showed that perceptual in- formation guided not only whether figurative language was used, but also the semantic/syntactic category of the vehicle terms. That is, at all ages, vehicle terms referencing action occurred only for event metaphorical similarity, even though the vehicle could have referenced the object as in "The iop is dancing" versus "The top is a ballerina" (Dent, 198 1).

This study provided a promising beginning in exploring the ways in which perceptual information for real objects and events is used by speakers when they communicate about similarities, and in studying how the ability to note similarity in the midst of difference develops with age and thus, experience. Further studies were undertaken to examine the effect of perceptual experience with metaphorical similarity on children's later recall of meta- phors based on the similarity, the relationships of producing descriptive met- aphors and later comprehending other metaphors based on the same similar- ity, and, finally, the effectiveness of fused miniature objects in guiding children's attention to different-kind similarities and consequent production of metaphors.

If metaphors are produced when a speaker apprehends the similarity of different-kind objects, then perceptual experience leading to that apprehen- sion should facilitate the later comprehension and recall of metaphors based on that similarity. In other words, perceptual experience should guide both a speaker's production and a listener's comprehension of metaphors about concrete objects and events. In a study of the effect of perceptual experience on the comprehension of metaphors in text (Dent & Ledbetter, 1986), 6-, 7-, and 10-year-old children viewed triads of filmed scenes (as described above) and received either mental fusion instructions or instructions to tell a story

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about pairs of scenes, both designed to elicit metaphors. All children were given a story recall task about 2 weeks later in which they listened to and im- mediately recalled four short stories each containing metaphors; two con- tained metaphors related to previously seen films and two had unrelated metaphors.

The story instruction proved to be more effective than mental fusion instructions in eliciting figurative language because the story context evoked frequent personification of objects. The recall of metaphors (and similes as well) in stories increased with age and was higher when the metaphor was based on previously perceived similarity regardless of previous elicit- ing instructions. Experience perceiving metaphorical similarity enhanced children's ability to understand and recall novel metaphors based on that sirn- ilarity 2 weeks later when the visual information was no longer present. Per- ceptual experience was related to overall text recall in that, across all ages, when the central metaphor was recalled, more total propositions tended to be recalled. In addition, the number of propositions recalled was higher in sto- ries that contained figures with action vehicles, such as "The deer is dancing. " This effect is consistent with the fact that event metaphorical similarity was more often apprehended and more often described figuratively, and it sug- gests that even in verbal (as opposed to visual) metaphors, action is salient and can increase verbal comprehension of a whole text that is thematically re- lated to the metaphor. At the individual level, there was a positive correlation between producing figurative language, especially in the story conditions, and recalling figures presented in text. Thus perceiving a similarity between objects different in kind, especially when the similarity is a style of motion, can guide both the production and later comprehension of verbal metaphors that take that similarity as the ground.

A final developmental study is described at this point as a first step in ex- ploring possible stimulus manipulations to enhance the probability that young children will notice the similarity between different-kind objects (Dent & Rosenberg, 1986). We investigated whether using miniature objects con- structed as one object with features of another different-kind object would effectively guide young children's attention to the similarity of objects differ- ent in kind and, thereby, enhance the likelihood of the child's using meta- phors to talk about the objects. Thus, the developmental process at work here would be one of learning to detect similarity between objects that are different in kind and, also, learning how to refer to one object as a means for communicating something about another object -the essence of metaphor.

The fused objects were contrasted with corresponding nonfused or simple objects and descriptions were obtained either by requesting a global descrip- tion or a fill-in to complete a sentence. In this type of situation, the percep- tual effects on descriptions can be examined in several ways. First, the fused objects present perceptual information that objects different in kind are simi- lar, so metaphors based on the two objects should be elicited more readily by

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the fused objects than by the simple objects especially for young children. Second, events provide more perceptual information about the objects participating in them than is available from a stationary object, so objects that are different in kind but can participate in the same kind of event should be more readily perceived as similar and described metaphorically, especially by young children.

Five-, 7-, and 10-year-old children and adults saw and talked about three- dimensional miniature objects presented in pairs, but talked about one object at a time in a structured interview wherein the experimenter asked the partici- pant to name the object, to talk about it in a "new and different" way (after modeling a metaphor as being "new and different"), and, finally, to fill in the blank in an utterance with the object as topic.

The materials were eight sets of miniature objects. Each set consisted of four miniature objects, two simple objects that corresponded to potential topic and vehicle terms (e.g., ccdeer" and "dancer") and two objects that were "fusions" of the two simple objects (e.g., deer with a skirt for 'The deer is a dancer" and a dancer with antlers for 'The dancer is a deer"). The objects were constructed to be simple and realistic in shape and color. The size of the objects varied from 3 to 8 in. in length across sets but was similar within sets. Half the sets were constructed so that each object within a set could be moved to exhibit the same characteristic motion (e.g., all the objects in the deer and dancer sets were on wires and could be moved back and forth in a leaping motion).

Participants' speech was scored for figurative language using the basic cri- terion that the description made sense but was not literally true and that it was not what the participant said the object was literally. Literal descriptions of the fused objects were, obviously, not counted as figurative speech; for example, "It's a king with a taif"is not figurative when said of the lion-king object, but "He's king of the 1ions"is figurative. The counts of figurative lan- guage were then categorized as spontaneous (responses to the general "de- scribe" instruction) or prompted (responses to the fill-in-the-blank instruc- tions). In addition, the figurative language was scored as relevant to the other object in the pair or not. All these counts were tabulated separately for the stationary and moving objects.

There were more metaphors produced by adults and 10-year-olds than by 7-year-olds who, in turn, produced more than 5-year-olds. This develop- mental progression parallels that found in the earlier study using films of metaphorically paired objects to elicit figurative language (Dent, 1984). The frequency of metaphor production was also affected by the perceptual infor- mation available to the participants as they described objects. That is , meta- phor production was higher in the fused-object condition than in the simple- object condition. Participants at all ages were more likely to use figurative language that involved talking about one object in terms of a different kind of object when they were describing one object that had features of a differ-

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ent kind of object. Note that descriptions were only scored as figurative after the participant had given a literal description of the object, and no descrip- tion that merely listed the different features of the fused objects was scored as figurative. An object that instantiated a fusion or condensation of two very different objects was effective in drawing a speaker's attention to the similari- ties between different kinds of objects and in eliciting figurative descriptions.

For 7- and 10-year-olds and for adults, events were more likely than sta- tionary objects to be described figuratively with metaphors relevant to the other object in the pair. The pattern was the same for both fused and simple objects, except that for adults, the superiority of events in eliciting relevant figurative descriptions held true only for the simple objects. These results confirmed earlier studies on the importance of motion information in guiding people's perception of the similarity between different kinds of ob- jects. That is, different kinds of objects can be seen as similar because they participate in the same tyupe of event. In past research, however, adults have not shown an effect of perceiving event similarity on the likelihood of pairing or figuratively describing unlike events. In the present case, even adults were more likely to bring two unlike simple objects together in a metaphor if the ground of the metaphor was a similar style of motion exhibited by each object.

There was, surprisingly, no effect on the likelihood of using an object name as avehicle of having just seen that object. A single object either readily brought to mind its paired object or was not described in terms of that paired object even when it was present.

There was a clear-cut influence of the fused objects on the frequency of both total and relevant metaphoric descriptions, in that both children and adults tended to use more figurative language when talking about fused ob- jects than about simple objects. Motion was an important factor in guiding children's perception of similarity between objects different in kind and, thus, in their ability to use one to talk about the other figuratively. Events were influential even for adults in the likelihood of seeing the similarity be- tween simple objects. Perceptual information that draws one's attention to either stationary configurations or styles of motion that are invariant across objects different in kind has a direct effect on children's and even adults' tendency to use figurative language when asked to describe an object in a "new and different way." Thus, although the discourse definitely supports the children's talk about the objects, the perceptual information is the basic factor in guiding their figurative descriptions.

Ongoing Developmental Research

One study, now ongoing, further explores the types of similarity children detect among kinds of objects rather than how they perceive objects that have paired a priori by an experimenter (as in previous research on

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metaphorical similarity using nonverbal materials). Most developmental categorization research (e.g., Markman, Cox, & Machidor, 1981; Smith, 1984) has employed a taxonomy based on abstract dimensions such as color, or clusters of features, designed by the investigator. My research focuses on determining what similarities children see among common everyday objects and events (i.e., naturally occurring kinds). The similarity underlying novel metaphors is a resemblance between two objects different in kind and not usually seen as similar, and we lack information on young children's under- standing of the nonverbal information for kinds. Psycholinguistic tasks requiring verbal responses have been used to study knowledge of kinds (Keil, 1979) and understanding of metaphorical similarity (Vosniadou & Ortony, 1983), but we do not know how children will organize common objects into kinds nonverbally. The strength of the method used in the sorting study is that there are no requirements for expressing understanding of kinds ver- bally. We also need to know whether young children can see a resemblance of unlike objects when they are encouraged to do so by instructions that allow for metaphorical sorting (i.e., "alike" vs. "same kind").

Children 4, 6, 8, and 10 years old and adults are each asked first to name and describe individual pictures of common objects (selected from meta- phors produced by children 4 to 10 years old). Then they are asked either to pick objects that are "like" a standard object (chosen by the experimenter) or to pick objects that are the "same kind of thing" and to justify their choice. Finally, they are asked to describe some metaphorically similar pairs of objects. The objects picked are scored as being (a) literally like the standard, (b) metaphorically like the standard, or (c) anomalous in relation to the standard. Preliminary results show that children as young as 4 years old show both literal and metaphoric matches to the "like" instruction but only literal matches to the "same-kind" instruction, with anomalous matches being infrequent. These young children seem to understand objects as being organized into kinds and, also, they will transcend boundaries between kinds when asked which things are alike-"alike" means both literal and meta- phoric similarity to them (see also Vosniadou & Ortony, 1983). Even 4-year- olds produce some metaphors, and they infrequently do so about objects they said were of the same kind.

CONCLUSIONS

Taking a perceptual approach to metaphor leads one to search for informa- tion available to speakers when they say something about an object or event using reference to a different kind of object or event. What does a young child experience when she looks at fireworks and suddenly sees a similarity to flowers, and then says, "Look, they're flowers!"? The similarity between

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large bursts of fireworks and certain kinds of flowers exists, and even a young child can notice that similarity and use one thing, a familiar thing, to talk about another kind of thing by using a metaphor. Many researchers have found that nonverbal materials support children's comprehension of verbal metaphor and the work I have described has gone on to show that visual in- formation guides the actual production and form of metaphors used by young children, school children, and adults. Perceptual differentiation of kinds of objects underlies children's understanding of naturally occurring kinds and the consequent ability to notice invariants across kinds. Just as fa- miliarity entails novelty (Rheingold, 1985), perceptual differentiation entails integration. One type of integration, cross-kind invariance, provides the starting point for using metaphors. Likewise, apprehending cross-kind simi- larity is one consequence of comprehending a verbal metaphor, along with a new understanding of the topic. Future work should explore children's devel- oping ability to detect and talk about similarities and kinds of things in the natural world as well as the children's effectiveness in communicating with others when they use metaphors.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The studies reported herein were supported by a Spencer Young Scholars Research Award and by a Howells Memorial Fellowship from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock.

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