Understanding Figurative Extensions of Body Part and Color Terms in 2- to 4-Year-Old Children

Through the use of a think-aloud procedure, we examine how 28 young children (aged 2;1 to 3;10) understand and explain figurative meanings in English that are conventional to adults but not necessarily to children. We focus on figurative extensions of the body part term “head” and figurative associations between colors and temperature. We explore the role that bodily experience as well as environmental and cultural factors play in this process. Even at these young ages, our results show the presence of both metaphorical and metonymical reasoning in some of the children’s explanations, based, in some cases, on their sensorimotor experiences and their interaction with the environment. However, our data reveal that other factors, such as the children’s familiarity with and growing knowledge of concepts, also play a role in their figurative thinking processes. These findings are in line with those found in other studies conducted with older learners.