Decoupling literalist behavior from children’s early metaphor comprehension abilities

A common finding in metaphor comprehension research is that children tend to favor literal interpretations. Previously, children's ‘literalist’ tendencies have been treated as indicative of delayed metaphor comprehension development. We investigated whether this observed literalism genuinely reflects difficulties with metaphor comprehension or whether children may privilege literal interpretations for some other reason. We assessed 3-to-7-year-olds' metaphor comprehension abilities using different novel functional, attributional, and psychological metaphors. We found that when children were not provided with literal options, they could derive metaphorical interpretations successfully. However, when literal options were available, even adults predominantly chose them over metaphorical interpretations. These findings challenge the previous assumption that young children's literalism is solely attributable to an early difficulty with metaphor. Reaction times as well as adult comparison data are also discussed.