Abstract
Stites, L. J., & Ozcaliskan, S. (2013). Developmental changes in children’s comprehension and explanation of spatial metaphors for time. Journal of Child Language, 40, 1123–1137.
English speakers routinely express and structure time in terms of spatial motion. That is, the metaphorical explanation of time involves a linguistic and conceptual mapping from the source domain of motion to the target domain of time. For example, TIME IS MOTION ALONG A PATH is a frequently used metaphorical mapping in English that gives rise to a wide range of metaphorical expressions (e.g., “hours fly by,” “we head to the end of the year,” “days follow days”). The formulation of metaphor as a mapping from more physical to more abstract domains of experience is closely tied to an embodied view of cognition, which suggests that higher order cognitive abilities have their roots in our everyday bodily experiences (Barsalou, 2008; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). Miles, Nind, and Macrae (2010) suggested that our sensory experiences of moving forward or backward are closely associated with our concept of time. Almost all studied languages of the world structure time on a back-to-front bodily axis, with the “past behind the body” and “future in front of the body,” suggesting once again a bodily basis for one’s conceptualization of time (Casasanto, Fotakopoulou, & Boroditsky, 2010; Iwasaki, 2009). Adult speakers of English—as well as several other languages—rely on a variety of metaphors to talk about time (e.g., time is resource, time is money, time is motion; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), and spatial metaphors constitute one such subsystem of metaphors that structure our concept of time (Evans, 2004; Iwasaki, 2009; Moore, 2006). The three most commonly used spatial metaphors for time include (a) MOVING-TIME, in which time moves in relation to a stationary observer (e.g., “winter approaches,” “evening drifts away”); (b) MOVING-EGO, in which observer of time (i.e., ego) moves in relation to a stationary time point (e.g., “we approach winter,” “we run away from the past”); and (c) SEQUENCE-AS-RELATIVE-POSITION-ON-A-PATH (hereafter sequence-as-position), in which events in time move in relation to one another independent of the observer of time (e.g., “winter follows autumn,” “playtime comes after lunch”).
These three common spatial metaphors for time (moving-time, moving-ego, sequence-as-position) are frequently used by adult speakers of English and evoke different ways of thinking about the concept of time. However, no research had examined developmental changes in children’s understanding of these three different spatial time metaphors. Metaphor comprehension and production constitute significant milestones in children’s language development. Children begin to understand and produce metaphors shortly after they begin to speak, and their metaphorical abilities improve with age (Ozcalıskan, 2010). Most of the earlier developmental work on metaphor comprehension and explanation focused on metaphors that involve extensions of object properties (e.g., sweet person, warm person; Waggoner & Palermo, 1989).
The goal was to focus on a system of spatial metaphors for time (moving-time, moving-ego, and sequence-as-position), and to determine the developmental trajectory of children’s understanding of each spatial metaphor type within this system.
Study
Participants and Tasks
The participants consisted of 60 children, at the ages of 3, 4, 5, and 6 with 15 participants in each age group, along with 15 adults. Children’s comprehension and explanation of spatial metaphors for time were assessed by using six short stories, each containing one of the three metaphor types for time, namely, moving-time, moving-ego, and sequence-as-position, with two stories per metaphor type. Each child first participated in a metaphor comprehension task followed by a metaphor explanation task, based on each story. In the metaphor comprehension task, children were asked to answer forced-choice questions about the metaphor in each story. In the metaphor explanation task, they were asked to explain their forced-choice responses. The data collection from children involved two puppets (Elmo and Grover), which provided the answers to each question. The child’s task was to choose the puppet with the correct answer and then explain the choice. Following are examples of the stories and tasks:
Moving-ego story: This is Rob [Experimenter (E) points to picture of a child character]. This is Rob’s friend Kyle [E points to picture of another child character]. Kyle tells Rob that he has a long way to go until his party. Rob is disappointed. He says, “ugh.” Why is Rob disappointed?
His party is later (correct choice); His party is over (incorrect choice); Why did you choose Elmo/Grover?
Moving-time story: This is Patrick [E points to picture of a child character]. This is Patrick’s Mom [E points to picture of an adult character]. Patrick’s mom tells him that his trip to the zoo is coming up. Patrick gets really excited! He shouts, “Yeah!” Why is Patrick so excited?
His trip to the zoo is soon (correct choice); His trip to the zoo is now (incorrect choice); Why did you choose Elmo/Grover?
Sequence-as-position story: This is Stacy [E points to picture of a child character]. This is Stacy’s sister Carol [E points to picture of another child character]. Carol says that ice cream follows lunch. Stacy is excited. She says, “Yippee!” Why is Stacy excited?
Ice cream is soon (correct answer); Ice cream is now (incorrect answer); Why did you choose Elmo/Grover?
In addition, to test whether children understood the literal meanings of the terms used in the metaphorical expressions in the stories, the authors presented each child with six physical motion descriptions (e.g., “the dog is coming up to the boy”) and asked them to choose between two pictures (e.g., dog approaching boy vs. dog moving away from boy), only one of which matched the physical description. The physical motion descriptions used the same verbs and prepositions as the metaphorical descriptions in the stories, but only conveyed physical motion meaning, thus serving as non-metaphor control sentences. See examples in Table 1.
Metaphorical and Physical Motion Examples.
Results
Table 2 shows types of responses children gave to the metaphors.
Response Type to Time Metaphors.
Three- and four-year-olds were at chance on forced-choice responses for all metaphors and gave primarily irrelevant responses to the explanation question. Five-year-olds performed a little above chance (57% correct) and were more likely to give semi-relevant responses.
There was a significant change between ages 5 and 6 on forced-choice items and explanations, with 6-year-olds giving primarily relevant responses and performing near adult levels.
Children were also able to verbally explain their understanding of metaphorical meanings a year later than they were able to understand the same metaphors in a non-verbal comprehension task.
Overall, children performed slightly worse on the forced-choice items and explanations for the sequence-as-position metaphors than for the moving-time and moving-ego items.
Almost all children performed at ceiling in the physical motion description task by age 3.
Discussion
By age 5, typically developing children are able to comprehend spatial metaphors for time, and by age 6, they can explain them. They do have somewhat greater difficulty in understanding and explaining sequence-as-position metaphors more difficult for children. There are several possible explanations for this difficulty:
1. The sequence-as-position metaphor may be cognitively more challenging than other spatial metaphors for time because it draws on the child’s experience as an observer of time’s motion through space. Adults have shown longer reaction times to questions about sequence-as-position metaphors than to questions about moving-ego metaphors (Gentner, Imai, & Boroditsky, 2002). Sequence-as-position metaphors may be more difficult for adults because they typically contain a temporal relationship between two events and an implicit observer, whereas moving-ego metaphors contain just the relationship between an event and an observer.
2. The moving-ego and moving-time metaphors present a more embodied conception of time. Humans have innumerable experiences with the movement of their bodies through space, and moving-ego and moving-time metaphors are based on this experience: The moving-ego frames time as moving toward or away from a stationary self, whereas the moving-time construes the self as moving toward or away from a stationary point in time. Moving-time and moving-ego metaphors thus rely only on our first-person perspective, whereas sequence-as-position metaphors rely on the observation of the relational movement of multiple events that are independent from the self. Metaphors couched in first-person motion experience may be easier for children to comprehend because children rely heavily on sensorimotor schemas to make sense of the world (Piaget, 1973).
3. Changes in children’s understanding of others’ minds, their perspective-taking ability, might serve as a stepping stone in grasping the meaning of time metaphors that are not framed in first-person perspective. Researchers argue that changes in understanding others’ mental states at least partly explain changes in children’s metaphorical abilities (e.g., Happé, 1993, 1995). According to this view, children’s understanding of others’ mental states (i.e., theory of mind understanding) shows rapid progress in preschool years, and children begin to understand that others may have different beliefs than their own around ages 4 to 5 (Welman, 1990); the age at which they also show significant improvements in their metaphor comprehension. Unlike moving-time and moving-ego metaphors, sequence-as-position metaphors require a perspective outside of the child’s immediate first-person experience with time (i.e., time moving toward child, child moving toward time); as such, the understanding of others’ minds as separate from one’s own might serve as an important social–cognitive ability that could feed into the developmental change in children’s understanding of sequence-as-position metaphors.
Comments
Children’s comprehension of metaphors has been studied for many years (Nippold, 2007) and several studies indicate that children and adolescents with language disorders exhibit difficulties comprehending metaphor. As the authors of this article mention in their literature review, the majority of studies of metaphor comprehension have involved extensions of object properties (e.g., his feet were ice; Jen’s hair is long and smooth—it is spaghetti; the criminal is a hard person). In a review of the literature, I can find no discussion of how students with language learning impairments specifically comprehend spatial metaphors of time. Spatial metaphors of time appear to be cognitively more complex than metaphors of object extension, and hence, one would likely expect that students with language learning difficulties (LLD) would have difficulty comprehending them. Researchers and clinicians need to investigate the ability of students with LLD to comprehend spatial metaphors of time.