The Relationship Between Metaphoric and Crossmodal Abilities During Development

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Abstract
Metaphoric and crossmodal abilities were investigated in children, aged 3-8 years. For this study metaphoric performance was regarded as based on the production of a relationship between physically dissimilar stimuli (presented in two sense-modalities), which are not normally perceived as being related. It was asked at what age crossmodal performance, based on specific rather than global/categorical differences within stimulus pairs, can be regarded as distinct from metaphoric performance. In Expt. 1, metaphoric and crossmodal two-trial "recognition" tasks were given in Touch and Vision at all ages. In Expt. 2,3- and 4-year-olds were first trained over 6-20 trials to choose one of two stimuli in one modality (Touch or Vision) and then given one "recognition" trial in the alternate modality. Children as young as three could relate specific physical stimulus differences across sense-modalities. Although metaphoric recognition was present on two problems in children aged 3 and 4 years, metaphoric performance was inferior to crossmodal performance at all ages. Crossmodal abilities improved with age due to improved intramodal skills; such intramodal improvement can probably account for only a part of the improvement on the metaphoric task. Reasons are given why metaphoric and crossmodal abilities may be separate over the age range 3-8 years.