Water dripping day by day wears the hardest rock away: comparing proverb comprehension by children and adults

ABSTRACT

Under the Cognitive Linguistics approach, we analyze proverb comprehension by children and adults, through a comprehension task. Three groups of participants were interviewed:.30 adults over the age of 18; 33 younger children (m=7,5 years old, sd=7,3 months); and 25 older children (m=10,59 years old, sd=7,92 months). A repeated measure analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted, complemented by a Tukey test. The items, the age groups, the nature of the questions and the interactions between these categories were analyzed. The analyses presented a main effect of age, nature of the question and item in the proverb comprehension competence of the interviewed groups (p<0.05). The younger the participant, the lower was his/her tendency to comprehend the items.

Keywords:
Cognitive Linguistics; Proverbs Comprehension; Proverbs; Proverbs Comprehension Task