Development of a figurative language comprehension instrument in Brazilian Portuguese: A pilot study with preschoolers

This study pilot-tests a figurative language comprehension instrument in Brazilian Portuguese, evaluating its applicability and sensitivity with preschoolers aged 3 to 6 years. The instrument comprehends four types of figurative phenomena (metaphors, metonymies, idioms, and proverbs) through previously developed individual tasks. This is the first study to combine all these tasks into a single standardized instrument and examine its applicability as a comprehensive psycholinguistic tool. Specifically, the study investigates whether the order of item presentation (grouped by phenomenon versus randomized) affects participants’ performance and explores early comprehension patterns of different figurative phenomena within this age range. A total of 34 preschoolers participated in the study. Overall, results indicate that the instrument is appropriate and sensitive to analyze figurative language comprehension. Quantitative analyses showed no significant differences between the versions, whereas qualitative analyses indicated practice effects in the version grouped by phenomenon. Consequently, the randomized presentation was selected, as it balances the different phenomena and reduces potential practice effects. Findings also show that children as young as three years already demonstrate emerging understanding of metaphors and metonymies, while idioms and proverbs are not yet comprehended across the 3- to 6-year-old sample. Taken together, results support the hypothesis of gradual acquisition of figurative phenomena, beginning with greater sensitivity to metonymies and metaphors and subsequently extending to idioms and proverbs. Overall, this study provides preliminary validity evidence for the COMFIGURA instrument, demonstrating that even in a small-scale pilot study, it is sensitive to developmental differences in preschoolers’ figurative language comprehension.