A naturalistic study of metaphor development: Seeing and seeing as.

Abstract

Dent-Read ady, at 18 months of age, first used a metaphor when she said, "wawa," C her word for water, while pointing at a large skylight showing a blue sky. Previously, she had used "wawa" as adults use the word water. In the next two days she showed correct comprehension of the words sky (both as seen outdoors and as seen through windows and skylights) and water. When Cady was 3 years, 10 months old, she had been looking around at the trees and then up at the sky with small binoculars when she said, "The sky looks like the sea when I look through the 'myroscope'. " The changes in the metaphor include verbal specification of the topic, the sky, and an elaboration of the vehicle or figurative term water to sea bringing in the vast extent of the water that corresponds metaphorically to the extent of the sky. How can one explain such elaborations and differentiations in the course of development?

Ecological Psychology and Enactivism: Perceptually-Guided Action vs. Sensation-Based Enaction1

“…Efforts to understand coordination between a person's action and various descriptions of variables in perceptual arrays have proceeded apace and coordination between perceivers has also received a fair amount of research attention (e.g., Turvey, 1990 ; Richardson et al, 2008 ; Marsh et al, 2009b ; Schmidt et al, 2011 ). But research on how perceiving is related to knowing in a broader sense, and to visualizing, remembering, and talking or conversing is still in its infancy (e.g., Dent, 1990 ; Dent-Read, 1997 ; Szokolszky, 2006 , 2019 ; Costall, 2010 ; Rader and Zukow-Goldring, 2012 , 2015 ; Read and Szokolszky, 2016 ).…”

“…On the direct perception ecological approach perceiving is always occurring, always open and developing/differentiating/integrating, and always a direct “knowing” of the surround through acting in/on it. Direct perception leaves open the relation of perceiving and other types of knowing, and these topics are active areas of research in current ecological psychology research (e.g., McCabe et al, 1986 ; Dent-Read, 1997 ; Rader and Vaughn, 2000 ; Szokolszky, 2006 , 2019 ; Araujo and Davids, 2009 ; Rader and Zukow-Goldring, 2012 , 2015 ; Read and Szokolszky, 2016 ; Szokolszky et al, 2019 ). The living systems approach, in contrast, begins by defining cognition, and the definition of perception follows from that initial definition/assumption.…”

“…“Reciprocal” indicates a relation in which one act is given in return for another; and a “complement” is something that completes, so the environment completes the organism (cf. Dent-Read, 1997 ).…”

Ecological approaches to perceptual learning: learning to perceive and perceiving as learning

“…Finally, we mention an ecological research direction related to language on the emergence of children’s metaphor use. This line of research studies children’s spontaneous metaphors in natural, as well as in experimental contexts, when, for example, a child exclaims, “The fireworks are flowers,” when watching fireworks, or when in a controlled situation, she views pictures fireworks and flowers (Dent-Read, 1997; Dent-Read, Klein, & Eggleston, 1994; Dent-Read & Szokolszky, 1993; Read & Szokolszky, 2016; Szokolszky, 2019). Young children’s metaphors are not mistakes, but perceptually guided actions and development takes place in the abilities to notice metaphoric resemblance and to talk about in a coordinated way with metaphoric forms of language.…”