ABSTRACT
Research on the development of metaphor abilities in children can be dated back as far as Asch and Nerlove's (1960) pioneering study, which concluded that children were unable to understand metaphors until middle or even late childhood. However, the study of metaphor in children did not take off until the 1970s. The studies that began to burgeon in the 1970s continued to reveal a picture of metaphor as a relatively late-developing skill (e.g., Cometa & Eson, 1978; Winner, Rosentiel, & Gardner, 1976), a view consistent with Piaget's (1959) discovery that children had considerable difficulties intepreting proverbs. The evidence for metaphor comprehension as a later skill was typically based on children's inability to paraphrase correctly metaphoric sentences presented out of any situational or narrative context. It was also assumed that the ability to produce metaphors was a late-developing skill emerging long after "literal" language abilities and that the kinds of utterances in early child speech that might pass for metaphors were, in fact, overextensions (e.g., Clark, 1973).
