Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine how children with hearing impairments comprehend metaphors. To do this, 20 sentences containing metaphors were selected; 10 of the sentences had perceptual metaphors, and 10, conceptual metaphors. A multiple-choice task was administered to subjects individually. Subjects were 44 students with severe or profound hearing impairments attending elementary, middle, and high schools for children with hearing impairments. Their hearing level, IQ, and reading age were controlled. In the multiple-choice task, the subjects were asked to choose the most appropriate paraphrase for the sentences containing a metaphor. The main results were as follows: (1) Scores on conceptual metaphors did not improve until the children were high school age. (2) The elementary school students who were in the fourth grade tented to interpret metaphors irrationally. (3) Students who found it difficult to comprehend a metaphor tended to choose the literal alternative. It seemed that these difficulties in metaphor comprehension were caused by the poverty of the children's everyday experiences. Therefore, to prompt the development of metaphor comprehension, it seems to be necessary for children with hearing impairments to have a lot of experiences, so that their ability to make inferences improves.
