How pupils of different ages perceive menus denoting metaphorical and metonymic expressions: Insights from eye-tracking

The "embodied" position on language comprehension proposes that metaphor or metonymy understanding can be represented in a distributed network based on previous sensorimotor experience. The current study attempted to investigate how children understood metaphor and metonymy in the context of daily diet that provided rich sensory experience for children. We implemented an eye-tracking experiment where a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design was employed. Thirty Chinese pupils aged from 6 to 12 were instructed to appreciate Chinese menus denoting metaphorical or metonymic expressions. Results of eye-tracking indicated that the dish images captioned with metaphorical names held the greatest attention of pupils, particularly for the juniors. Moreover, the inclusion of Chinese pinyin in the menu served as a distractor that reduced pupils' attention to other menu elements. This study adds to the state of the art on the embodied account of language by inspecting how the under-explored children perceived metaphorical and metonymic expressions. The context of everyday diet, abundant in sensory, provides a more vivid scenario for this topic. It also offers a practical insight into how to design menus to invoke particular sensory experience for children who are undergoing both physical and mental development.