Assessing metaphor comprehension as a metasemantic ability in students from 9-to-14 years-old.

This article presents a test for assessing metaphor comprehension (MCT) in explicit linguistic form for subjects aged 9- to 14 years-old, The test is paper-and-pencil,composed of 12 items subdivided into 2 groups of metaphors: Psycho-physical(PP) and Conceptual (C), mainly drawn and adapted to Italian language from international literature on metaphor comprehension. The sample is composed of 874 Italian children from 4th to 8th grade, with gender balance, of average social background. By means of Principal Components Analysis, with oblimin rotation, a two-factor solution emerged, that espouses the C/PP metaphors distinction. All corrected item-total correlation coefficients >.30 were representative and acceptable. Correlation coefficients between MCT and Standard progressive Matrices (SPM38) and some validated metalinguistic subtests were all significant at p <0.01 level, showing good convergent validity. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients for the two subscales were: .62 (C), .51 (PP) and .70 for MCT total score. Test-retest correlation coefficients for the two subscaleswere .79 (C), .69 (PP), and .83 for MCT total score. Cohen’s Kappa coefficients for interrater reliability are: .75 (4th-5th), .74 (6th), .67 (7th), .81 (8th).