Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Research in Developmental Disabilities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/redevdis Enhancing the comprehension of visual metaphors in individuals with intellectual disability with or without down syndrome Shlomit Shnitzer-Meirovich a , Hefziba Lifshitz a , Nira Mashal a,b, ⁎ a School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel b Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel ARTICLE INFO Number of reviews completed is 2. ABSTRACT This study is the first to investigate the effectiveness of deep and shallow intervention programs in the acquisition of visual metaphor comprehension in individuals with non-specific intellectual disability (NSID; aged 15–59, N = 53) or Down syndrome (DS; aged 15–52, N = 50). The deep intervention program was based on dynamic assessment model for enhancing analogical thinking. The shallow intervention program involves memorizing a metaphorical relationship between pairs of pictures. Visual metaphor comprehension was measured by the construction of a metaphorical connection between pairs of pictures. The results indicated that both etiology groups exhibited poor understanding of visual metaphors before the intervention. A significant improvement was observed in both interventions and both etiology groups, with greater im- provement among individuals who underwent the deep processing. Moreover, the latter proce- dure led to greater generalization ability. The results also indicated that vocabulary contributed significantly to understanding unstudied metaphors and that participants with poorer linguistic abilities exhibited greater improvement in their metaphorical thinking. Thus, individuals with ID with or without DS are able to recruit the higher-order cognitive abilities required for visual metaphor comprehension. What this paper adds? (a) The current study is the first to investigate the effectiveness of intervention programs in the acquisition of the higher-order cognitive ability of visual metaphor comprehension in individuals with NSID or DS. (b) The results show for the first time that individuals with ID with or without DS are able to recruit the higher-order cognitive abilities required for deep information processing. (c) The results show that deep processing is more effective than shallow processing and leads to a greater understanding of visual metaphors, whether or not they had been studied during the intervention. (d) The results show that participants with poorer linguistic abilities exhibited greater improvement in the comprehension of visual metaphors. 1. Introduction People often use figurative language in their daily conversation as a means of understanding and conveying information. The https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2018.01.010 Received 15 March 2017; Received in revised form 9 January 2018; Accepted 22 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. E-mail address: mashaln@mail.biu.ac.il (N. Mashal). Research in Developmental Disabilities 74 (2018) 113–123 Available online 03 February 2018 0891-4222/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T