Development of novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension in typically developing children and Williams syndrome Jo Van Herwegen a,b, *, Dagmara Dimitriou c , Gabriella Rundblad b a Department of Psychology, Kingston University London, UK b Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College London, UK c Department of Psychology and Human Development, Institute of Education, UK 1. Introduction Metaphor and metonymy are two types of figurative expressions in which an expression normally associated with one concept (target) is used to communicate something about another concept (vehicle), without expressing an explicit link between the two concepts. In a metaphor, the target and vehicle belong to two different conceptual domains and a common ground (or link) is established through comparison or analogy (Warren, 1992). For example, in the metaphor ‘‘John is a lion.’’, John (target) is being compared to a lion (vehicle), as both are strong. In contrast, in a metonym, one salient aspect is used to refer to the whole or some other aspect of that entity (Frisson & Pickering, 1999), and thus the target and vehicle belong to the same conceptual or experiential domain (Barcelona, 2003). For example, in the metonym ‘‘The palace gave a speech.’’, the term palace (vehicle) is used to refer to the people within the palace (target). Metaphors and metonyms provide a way to understand and organise new ideas (Glucksberg, 2001; Ortony, 1975), and thus occur frequently as a tool within education to Research in Developmental Disabilities 34 (2013) 1300–1311 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 16 November 2012 Received in revised form 20 January 2013 Accepted 21 January 2013 Available online 14 February 2013 Keywords: Metaphor Metonymy Williams syndrome Semantic knowledge A B S T R A C T This study investigated the development of novel metaphor and metonymy comprehen- sion in both typically developing (TD) children and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS). Thirty-one TD children between the ages of 3;09 and 17;01 and thirty-four individuals with WS between the ages of 7;01 and 44 years old were administered a newly developed task examining novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension, as well as a range of standardised tests that assess semantic knowledge. This age range and the background measures allowed construction of developmental trajectories to investigate whether chronological age or mental age, represented by word knowledge, relate to novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension. The results showed that comprehension of figurative language did not increase with chronological age in WS, in contrast to TD. Although there was no difference for the different types of metaphors, certain metonymy expressions were found to be easier than others in the TD group. In addition, semantic knowledge was a reliable predictor for novel metaphor and metonymy comprehension in the TD but only for metonymy in the WS group. In sum, development of novel metonymy in the WS group is only delayed while comprehension of novel metaphor is both delayed and atypical. However, future research should further investigate differences between sub-types, as well as what cognitive factors relate to novel metaphor comprehension in individuals with Williams syndrome. ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Kingston University London, Penrhyn Road, Kingston-Upon-Thames KT1 2EE, UK. Tel.: +44 020 8547 2803. E-mail address: J.vanherwegen@kingston.ac.uk (J. Van Herwegen). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Research in Developmental Disabilities 0891-4222/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.01.017