No abstract

Metaphor comprehension development, a long-standing topic in the cognitive science, is the source of multiple strands of research. These provided evidence both for the presence of early precursors in young children and for a progressive and relatively late mastery of metaphor, which this work focuses on. Moreover, research in the field of atypical development has put to the fore two important cognitive bases for metaphor comprehension, that are theory of mind (TOM) and structural language, but these have remained relatively understudied in typical development, and not yet in a joint perspective. To address this issue, this work introduces a new tablet-based, orally presented metaphoric reference task, which allows for response times collection. In Experiment 1, we confirmed the viability and developmental sensitivity of this task in typically developing 7- and 10-year-old children (N=89). In Experiment 2, we used a version of this task with 248 typically developing 6- to 11-year-olds, together with language and non-verbal TOM tasks. Results showed a non-linear developmental trend in metaphor comprehension, with a focused improvement between 7 and 9 years of age. Mixed-effect models explaining children's accuracy and response times revealed a critical developmental shift with respect to the cognitive predictors of metaphor comprehension. The data showed that TOM is a reliable predictor of successful performance among younger children but fades away, at which point language becomes a predictor of success on the task among older children. This study underlines the importance of considering developmental perspectives when referring to the cognitive bases of metaphor skills.

Correctly assessing children’s theory of mind (TOM) is essential in clinical practice. Yet, most tasks heavily rely on language, which constitutes an obstacle for several populations. Langdon and Coltheart’s (1999) Picture Sequencing Task (PST), developed for research, avoids this limitation through a minimally-verbal procedure. We thus developed a tablet adaptation of this task for individual application, engaging children’s motivation and allowing response times collection. To assess this tablet-PST, we first tested a large sample of typically developing children (6-11 years-old, N = 248), which confirmed the task’s structural and content validity, and permitted the construction of three standardized clinical indices. In a second experiment, we applied those to previously diagnosed autistic children (N = 23), who were expected to show atypical TOM performances. Children’s outcomes were consistent with what was hypothesized and confirmed the task’s clinical sensitivity and external validity. The tablet-PST thus appears as a suitable tool, providing detailed profiles to inform clinical decisions.