1. Figurative Language Development Research and Popular Children’s Literature: Why We Should Know, “Where the Wild Things Are” Kathleen Ahrens

2. Agenda Introduction Problems from previous studies Reasons for the discrepancy in methodologies and materials ‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials Aim of this study Research design Results

3. Introduction Previous studies has lead to a well- developed of understanding of how children come to comprehend figurative language Children do not generally exhibit complete adult proficiency in metaphor comprehension until 7 or 8 years of age Before that, children’s metaphor comprehension is limited

4. Problems from previous studies Concerns have arisen over the methodologies and materials used to evaluate children’s figurative language comprehension abilities (metaphorical comprehension ability)

5. Reasons for the discrepancy in methodologies A dominant methodology in language comprehension research involves presenting artificial utterances created by adult experimenters for children to comprehend This methodology considers adult proficiency as a goal state with which the current level of children’s performance is compared

6. Reasons for the discrepancy in methodologies Through the use of clever techniques (e.g. dishabituation paradigms) that children can exhibit some cognitive functions much earlier than was once believed By using material that children are unaccustomed to (require adult proficiency to comprehend), children’s figurative language processing capacities may be underestimated

7. Reasons for the discrepancy in materials The comprehension materials in language development studies against what is found in popular children’s books “Noun-phrase” metaphors were more prevalent in study materials than in popular children’s literature (Broderick,1992) Broderick’s (1992) alert has gone unheeded

8. Reasons for the discrepancy in materials It is unclear whether children’s literature serve as the appropriate external referent for research materials Broderick (1992) noted there is a need to understand children’s normal oral experience with figurative language as a parallel means of assessing the validity of research materials

9. ‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials Verbal statements commonly found in children’s literature as materials in language development research Children’s literature should not be the primary comparison case to assess its validity because of a great deal of variability exists in children’s literature

10. ‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials Understanding the nature of the popular children’s literature and the figurative language content in children’s literature is important to fully understand the development of complex language processing

11. ‘Ideal’ methodologies and materials Level of difficulty in the content of children’s literature should match with the children’s processing capacities, otherwise it may hinder developmental potential

12. Aim of this study Evaluate the figurative language content of the children’s literature commonly available in U.S. public libraries takes place across three variables Historical Genre Audience

13. Aim of this study To determine the content of children’s literature has been accounted for the development of children’s figurative language capacity To determine whether metaphorical language is differentially applied to expository versus nonexpository texts To determine whether the developmental nature of figurative language processing is accounted for in the children’s popular literature

14. Research Design Materials - Popular children’s books available in the Children’s Department of the Racine Public Library across three factors - Historical (books published before 1950s VS after 1950s) - Reason: 1950 is a compromise line between splitting the selection of books at the library in half and splitting the books according to the beginning of research on children’s figurative language abilities

15. Research Design Materials - Genre (Fiction VS Nonfiction according to the Dewey Decimal classification system) - Reason: This is a tradition division in the library classification system and it influences the amount of metaphorical language

16. Research Design Materials - Target Audience Age (books targeted to children less than 8 years of age VS books targeted to children age 8 years and older according to several separate book reviewers used by the librarians) - Reason: Current generally accepted full adult proficient metaphor comprehension begins at around age 8 and the designations of age range are the most widely used and available in reality

17. Research Design Materials - Source of the book collection is from the children’s department of a large and well-stocked public libraries in U.S. - Reason: This is the only source that attempts to appeal to a wide range of children and their caregivers ad that is readily available

18. Research Design Procedure 1.Two independent readers started out by reading all of the books in the sample 2.The readers were instructed to record each different kinds of metaphorical or similar comparative statement they encountered in the texts

19. Research Design Procedure - The readers were first tutored on what it is metaphorical instance by showing them examples of conceptual metaphors from various source - The readers were also tutored on Children's books not used in the sample were perused by each of the readers with the first author of this article by highlighting the instances of language that used conceptual metaphors

20. Research Design Procedure 3.An operational definition was constructed for the four general types of comparative statements identified in the books - Four general comparative statements include Conceptual metaphors, Nominal metaphors, Similes, and personification - Personification is omitted for this study because the researchers suspected personification would be more prominent in books targeted at younger children instead just those aged below or above 8

21. Research Design Procedure 4.The operational definitions were tested by having each of the readers count metaphors in a subsample of texts. 5.Readers would then compare their notes to see if they had the exact same number of metaphors and appeared in the same instances of text as metaphorical 6.The readers went through a second subsample of texts to double-check their use of the operational definition until they reached perfect agreement

22. Research Design Calculation of metaphors per book -Books with short enough texts to enable a direct count of all words and metaphors were designated “smaller”  the number of metaphors and words were directly counted -Books with difficulty to direct count all words and metaphors were designated “larger”  the number of metaphors and words were counted by representative samples of at least three pages of texts and then averaged on those pages, then these numbers were then multiplied by the total number of pages to estimate the number of metaphors and words in the entire text -Mean number of metaphors per 1000 words of text was calculated

23. Results The overall frequency of metaphors per 1000 words of text was 53.86 and ranged from 28.88 to 80.40

24. Results The factor that has the most significant numbers of metaphors are from Fiction (70.32 metaphors per 1000 words)

25. Discussion Will be continued after Lunar New Year Holiday