Laboratory of Neurolinguistics and Experimental Pragmatics (NEP), Department of Humanities and Life Sciences, University School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Pavia, Italy.
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Italy.
Cognition. 2023 Sep;238:105504. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105504. Epub 2023 Jun 22.
Theoretical pragmatics in the post-Gricean tradition argued that metaphor requires understanding of how another person sees the world. Yet, it is unclear what role mindreading plays in developing metaphor skills. Here we examined the relationship between metaphor and Theory of Mind (ToM) in middle childhood by using two different tasks. In addition to the Physical and Mental Metaphors task (PMM), based on the verbal explanation of physical and mental metaphors, we revived the Referential Metaphors task for children (Noveck, Bianco, & Castry, 2001), where metaphorical and literal referents are presented in a narrative context. The sample included 169 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old children, assessed also for ToM (via the Strange Stories) and other linguistic and cognitive skills as control variables. In the PMM, ToM supported the understanding of mental (but not physical) metaphors in 9-year-olds only, whereas in the Referential Metaphors task ToM supported accuracy of understanding metaphors (but not literal items) in younger children as well. At age 10, ToM effects were negligible in both tasks. These findings suggest that ToM has a task-specific role in metaphor, linked to the characteristics of the items in the task at stake, being for instance greater for metaphors with mental (compared to physical) content and for non-literal (compared to literal) referents. The findings also suggest that the relationship between ToM and metaphor skills is developmental sensitive, as children start to capitalize on ToM earlier in development when the metaphor context is richer, and these effects fade with age. Theoretically, these data argue in favor of the relevance-theoretic account of metaphor, spelling out different ways in which ToM might support metaphor resolution across tasks, for instance by providing better access to the psychological lexicon (i.e., terms referring to mental states) and better context processing, serving as a springboard to achieve sophisticated pragmatic skills in middle childhood.
后格莱斯传统的理论语用学认为，隐喻需要理解另一个人如何看待世界。然而，思维阅读在发展隐喻技能方面的作用尚不清楚。在这里，我们通过使用两种不同的任务来研究儿童中期隐喻和心理理论（ToM）之间的关系。除了基于对物理和心理隐喻的口头解释的物理和心理隐喻任务（PMM）之外，我们还恢复了针对儿童的参考隐喻任务（Noveck、Bianco 和 Castry，2001），其中隐喻和字面参考在叙事背景中呈现。样本包括 169 名 8、9 和 10 岁的儿童，还通过《奇怪的故事》评估了他们的 ToM（心理理论）以及其他语言和认知技能作为控制变量。在 PMM 中，只有 9 岁的儿童的 ToM 支持对心理（而不是物理）隐喻的理解，而在参考隐喻任务中，ToM 支持对隐喻（而不是字面项目）的理解在年幼的孩子中也同样准确。在 10 岁时，两种任务中的 ToM 效应都微不足道。这些发现表明，ToM 在隐喻中具有特定于任务的作用，与任务中涉及的项目的特征相关联，例如，对于具有心理（与物理相比）内容和非字面（与字面相比）参考的隐喻，作用更大。这些发现还表明，ToM 和隐喻技能之间的关系具有发展敏感性，因为当隐喻语境更丰富时，儿童在发展过程中更早地利用 ToM，并且这些影响随着年龄的增长而消失。从理论上讲，这些数据支持隐喻的关联理论解释，阐明了 ToM 在不同任务中支持隐喻解决的不同方式，例如通过更好地访问心理词汇（即，指称心理状态的术语）和更好的上下文处理，作为在儿童中期实现复杂语用技能的跳板。
