Mental imagery of concrete proverbs: A developmental study of children, adolescents, and adults

Abstract

The development of mental imagery in relation to the comprehension of concrete proverbs (e.g., one rotten apple spoils the barrel) was examined in children, adolescents, and adults who were ages 11 to 29 years old (n = 210). The findings indicated that age-related changes occurred in mental imagery and in proverb comprehension during the years between late childhood and early adulthood, and that the two domains were associated in children and adults but not in adolescents. Children and adults were more likely to describe relevant mental imagery (age 11: "A big barrel of apples and a woman picks up one that is rotten and there are worms in it and the worms go to all the other apples") when they also comprehended the proverb on a multiple-choice task. It was also found that participants' mental images became more metaphorical in relation to increasing age (age 21: "One bad comment can spoil the entire conversation"). The findings are consistent with dual coding theory, the view that nonverbal information (relevant visual imagery) in addition to verbal information (related words and phrases) supports language comprehension in the case of concrete meanings. The results also support the view that mental imagery reflects figurative understanding and the individual's tacit awareness of underlying metaphorical concepts.Proverbs are figurative expressions such as silence is golden, haste makes waste, and early to bed, early to rise that convey the beliefs, social norms, or moral concerns of a society

Children's Computation of Complex Linguistic Forms: A Study of Frequency and Imageability Effects

“…This interpretation is supported by several lines of evidence. Previous findings indicate that reliance on imageability (including with regard to language) decreases between childhood and adulthood; in other words, children rely more on imageability than adults [48], [83], [84]. At the same time, it is plausible that frequency increasingly influences memory traces between childhood and adulthood.…”

Água mole em pedra dura tanto bate até que fura: uma comparação entre a compreensão de provérbios por crianças e adultos

“…Sob a perspectiva da Linguística Cognitiva, Gibbs e Beitel (1995) defi nem provérbios como expressões sentenciais não literais, normalmente fi xas que fazem parte do conhecimento cultural dos falantes, referindo-se a conhecimentos genéricos e ideias abstratas. Já Duthie et al (2008) defi nem provérbios como "[...] compactos, rápidos e fáceis de serem memorizados, veiculando crenças, normas sociais ou preocupações morais de uma sociedade", incluindo interpretação social às sentenças. Portanto, provérbios tratam de sentenças curtas utilizadas para representar um conhecimento culturalmente signifi cativo, sendo tal comunicação baseada na não literalidade da sentença.…”

“…Ou seja, consideram o aspecto cultural de um provérbio na sua compreensão. Dentre os estudos encontrados, apenas Duthie et al (2008) fi zeram uma análise semelhante à tratada aqui. Nesse estudo, os autores dividiram sua amostra em três grupos etários -crianças, adolescentes e adultos -, comparando o desempenho dos participantes entre si.…”

The concreteness effect and the bilingual lexicon: The impact of visual stimuli attachment on meaning recall of abstract L2 words

“…Within each V1 and V2 system are stored both abstract and concrete words. A robust number of studies, however, have shown that concrete words are learned better than abstract words (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004;de Groot, 1992, de Groot et al, 1994Duthie et al, 2008;Schwanenflugel et al, 1992). Paivio's bilingual dual-coding theory helps to explain this concreteness effect.…”

“…Research in bilingualism has shown that concrete words are more easily learned than abstract words (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004;de Groot, 1992;de Groot et al, 1994;Duthie et al, 2008;Schwanenflugel et al, 1992). The reason for this has been attributed to the visual imagery of concrete words.…”