Camilo Rodriguez Ronderos

For decades, discussions on the development of metaphor comprehension have revolved around the earliest age in which children are able to understand metaphoric meaning. Parallel to this, the adult metaphor comprehension literature has intensely discussed how different factors - aptness and conventionality in particular - mediate metaphor comprehension, and how these factors can be indicative of different comprehension mechanisms. The present study brings these two literatures together by showing how conventionality and aptness impact metaphor development in different ways. The findings will be discussed in the light of competing accounts of metaphor comprehension as well as in relation to existing views on the development of pragmatic abilities.