بررسی روان‌زبان‌شناختی درک استعاره‌های دارای بار هیجانی و بدون بار هیجانی در دو نوع متداول و نوپدید در نمونه‌ای از کودکان فارسی‌زبان

مقدمه: پژوهش حاضر به بررسی میزان درک استعاره‌های متداول (آشنا) و استعاره‌های نوپدید (ناآشنا) با دو محتوای هیجانی و غیرهیجانی در میان نمونه‌ای از کودکان فارسی‌زبان عادی و سالم 4 تا 12 سال می‌پردازد.روش کار: پژوهش حاضر، در زمینه میزان توانایی درک استعاره‌های مفهومی در سنین مختلف کودکی (به ‌ویژه در کودکان پیش‌دبستانی و دبستانی) طراحی شد. شرکت‌کنندگان، 113 کودک فارسی‌زبان سالم از سنین 4 تا 12 سال بدون هیچ‌گونه اختلال زبانی، شنوایی و ذهنی، شرکت کرده و همه آنها راست ‌دست بودند. شرکت‌کنندگان، از طریق پاسخ به پرسشنامه‌های شامل سوال‌های چندگزینه‌ای (32 سوال) و سوال‌های تشریحی (8 سوال) در چهار گروه استعاره‌های متداول هیجانی، استعاره‌های متداول غیرهیجانی، استعاره‌های نوپدید هیجانی و استعاره‌های نوپدید غیرهیجانی در یک جلسه مورد ارزیابی قرار گرفتند.یافته‌ها: نتایج نشان دادند که کودکان فارسی‌زبان از سنین 4 سالگی (و یا حتی قبل از آن)، درک مفاهیم انتزاعی و استعاره‌های مفهومی را آغاز می‌کنند. همچنین، کودکان با سنین بالاتر، بیان‌های استعاره‌ای پیچیده‌تر را بهتر و بیشتر از کودکان با سنین پایین‌تر درک کردند. نتایج تجربی نشان دادند که بر اساس آزمون‌های طراحی شده این پژوهش، تفاوت قابل توجهی در درک انواع استعاره‌های متداول هیجانی، متداول غیرهیجانی، نوپدید هیجانی و نوپدید غیرهیجانی در میان کودکان 4 تا 12 سال فارسی‌زبان وجود ندارد.نتیجه‌گیری: بنابر نتایج این پژوهش، توانایی درک استعاره در کودکان، روند رشدی دارد و با افزایش سن کودک، میزان توانایی درک استعاره هم در آنها افزایش یافته و همچنین در درک کودکان فارسی‌زبان در استعاره‌های دارای بار هیجانی و بدون بار هیجانی در دو نوع متداول و نوپدید تفاوت قابل توجهی وجود ندارد. 

a psycholinguistic study of comprehension of emotional and non-emotional metaphors in two types of conventional and novel ones among persian-speaking children

given the pivotal role of cognitive and mental development in childhood, numerous researchers have explored children’s metaphorical abilities from an early age. in the 1980s, investigations into metaphor comprehension introduced new scientific methods, enabling more detailed research. these studies, conducted in a linguistic context, assessed children’s performance through multiple-choice tests and evaluations (12). while some researchers initially doubted children’s capacity to understand metaphors early on, findings suggested that children aged 3-4 possess some ability to process figurative language. although they might not fully articulate the underlying logic of metaphors, this ability gradually improves with age and cognitive development (13).based on some studies, children start to produce, understand, and differentiate literal from non-literal meanings around age 4. their metaphorical understanding matures by age 8, and they create the most insightful metaphors between ages 10 and 12. this study compares the metaphorical comprehension of children aged 4 to 12 across types of metaphors: conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors. this study hypothesizes that older children better comprehend all metaphor types and all children better comprehend conventional and emotional metaphors than novel and non-emotional metaphors.methodsa total of 113 children (boys and girls) from kindergarten, preschool, and elementary schools in district 2 of tehran (saadat abad) participated in the study. in this research, because questions related to different groups of metaphors in the tests were selected and presented based on stories from persian children’s storybooks for age groups a, b, and c, the participants were divided into two groups: group 1 consisted of 57 children (ages 4 to 7 years) and group 2 included 56 children (ages 8 to 12 years). all children were from normal healthy backgrounds, with persian as their first language, and none were bilingual. the core research employed two types of questionnaire tests, a multiple-choice and an interpretation task. the multiple-choice test consisted of 32 questions with three options in answers, each presenting short stories with metaphorical statements. every set of eight questions pertained to a specific group of metaphors. conventional-emotional metaphors, conventional-non-emotional metaphors, novel-emotional metaphors, and novel-non-emotional metaphors. the interpretation test involved eight questions; every question was a short story with a metaphorical statement. in this test, every two questions were related to one of the types of metaphors. after a brief conversation to familiarize the child with the tests and directions to make them feel secure and ensure their cooperation, the examiner commenced the tests.participants were enrolled in one kindergarten, one preschool, and two elementary schools in district 2 of tehran, iran. before the study commenced, a pre-test, consisting of a researcher-made test for group 1 and some sub-scales of wisc-iv for group 2, was administered to ensure normal or similar linguistic competence. the pre-tests were done on paper, but the basic tests were done using a laptop. both tasks were designed based on reaction time (rt). the rt task is one of the most common tasks used when investigating the processes involved in metaphor comprehension. difficulty, familiarity, and predictability of the stimulus affect the rt. the more complex a stimulus, the longer it takes to process the information. this research analyzed the accuracy of responses and their rts. results statistical analyses were conducted using spss version 26.0.0, incorporating both inferential and descriptive methods to evaluate the hypotheses. the present study focused on the early emergence of the inferential ability to grasp the metaphorical meaning, which is evident in the tests conducted as early as possible. evidently, children’s proficiency in figurative language will further advance with developing their vocabulary, world knowledge, and processing resources.the obtained findings suggest that children can comprehend metaphors as early as four years old, which is evident in both multiple-choice and interpretation tasks. the study delved into the age of metaphor processing and comprehension, revealing that children connect common abstract thoughts to concrete objects by around four years old. this challenges earlier views of piaget (1959) (6), piaget (1962) (7), chukovsky (1968), matter and davis (1975) suggesting children could not grasp abstract concepts (according to vosniadou (1987) (14)). while vosniadou (1987) (14) contrasts this, stating that some children understand abstract concepts at 3 or 4, aligning with vosniadou and ortony (1986) (12), billow (1981) (20), gardner et al. (1978) (18). the research highlights that as cognitive and language development progress, so does metaphorical competency, emphasizing the correlation between cognitive and language growth. the results showed that persian-speaking children begin to understand abstract concepts and conceptual metaphors from the age of 4 (or even earlier). additionally, older children demonstrated a better and more extensive comprehension of complex metaphorical expressions than younger children. the study’s empirical results indicated that, based on the designed tests, no significant difference was found in the comprehension of various types of conventional emotional metaphors, conventional non-emotional metaphors, novel emotional metaphors, and novel non-emotional metaphors among persian-speaking children aged 4 to 12 years.conclusionsthe present study results show that children gain a better understanding of metaphorical concepts based on their ages. both genders exhibited improved metaphorical understanding with age, supporting the hypothesis of age-related growth in metaphor comprehension, while the notion of better understanding conventional and emotional metaphors over novel and non-emotional ones among children