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Whyte et al (2014) and Norbury (2004) state that idioms are an important area of research as they occur frequently in verbal and written language and are used extensively in the language of the classroom. Good comprehension of idioms correlates with good academic ability. There are two main theories of idiom

acquisition in typically developing children: Ackerman’s (1982, in Norbury, 2004) ‘giant lexical unit’ theory which suggests that idioms are acquired in the same way as single lexical items and Gibbs’ (1987, in Norbury, 2004) ‘metasemantic theory’ which suggests that the meaning of some idioms can be gleaned from analysing their component parts. If participants don’t rely on context to understand idioms, this suggests that they have been stored as a giant lexical unit. Older children and adults do not rely on context to understand idioms as much as younger children do. Both theories have validity at different stages of development and for different types of idioms. Conner et al’s (2011) study of idiom comprehension in adulthood (age bands 18-30 and 60-85) supports the ‘giant lexical unit’ theory as the idiom retrieval

difficulties in the older adults correlated with their lexical item retrieval difficulty. Idiom acquisition involves a combination of top-down processing (from the context) and bottom-up processing (semantic analysis). Frequency of exposure is also a significant factor in idiom comprehension. Highly familiar idioms are easier to understand then less familiar idioms. In addition, transparent idioms are easier to understand than opaque idioms.

Children use both semantic analysis and supporting context to process the meaning of idioms. There are conflicting findings about the age at which children can use semantic analysis to understand idioms. Several studies indicate that this is an early developing skill, but others claim it develops later in childhood. Levorato and Cacciari (1995, in Cain et al 2009) propose that the most significant development of the skills and abilities needed to process and acquire figurative language takes place between 7 and 11 years of age. Their ‘global elaboration model’ illustrates that the understanding of idioms depends on the same skills and strategies that underpin general verbal and reading comprehension.

Gibbs (1987, 1991 in Caillies and Le Sourn-Bissaoui, 2008) demonstrated that that transparent idioms (which have literal components, such as ‘lay down

the law’) are easier to understand than opaque idioms (where the meaning cannot be derived from the individual words, such as ‘kick the bucket’) due to the closer link between figurative and literal meaning in the former. Consequently, children understand transparent idioms earlier than opaque ones. Nippold and Taylor (2002) point out that familiarity of idioms is also a factor in their comprehension.

Developmental studies have shown that idioms that are higher in familiarity and transparency are easier to understand than idioms that are less familiar and more opaque.

Specific critical evaluation is given after the description of some studies and a generic critical evaluation summarising features of many of the studies is given at the end of this section.

Gibbs (1991, in Cain et al, 2009) demonstrated that third-graders (mean age 8:09) but not first graders (mean age 6:10) were able to understand transparent idioms out of context. Levorato and Cacciari (1999, in Cain et al, 2009) found the same results with 9 and 7 year-old children. Gibbs also found that all age groups benefited from the presence of context. Only 8 and 9 year-olds were able to use semantic analysis to aid comprehension of some transparent idioms out of context. The 8 year-olds understood 37% and the 9 year-olds 42% of the idioms tested.

Caillies and Le Sourn-Bissaoui (2008) reported that children as early as third- kindergarten grade (aged 5-6 years) were able to understand transparent idioms in context in a multiple choice task, while they needed to be in second-grade (aged 7-8 years) to understand opaque idioms.

However Nippold and Rudzinski (1993, in Cain et al, 2009) and Nippold and Taylor (1995, in Cain et al, 2009) found a positive correlation between transparency and performance on an idiom explanation task for 14 and 17 year-olds but not for 11 year-olds, indicating that semantic analysis of idioms develops quite early but continues to be refined into later childhood.

Caillies and Le Sourn-Bissaoui (2008) tested twenty-six 5 year-old (mean age 5:03), thirty 6 year-old (mean age 6:03) and 25 seven year-old (mean age 7:04) children’s theory of mind level and understanding of transparent and opaque French idioms. The children had to complete five theory of mind tasks: an appearance–reality task, three false-belief tasks and a second-order false-belief task. They then had to perform a multiple choice task after listening to the idioms in context. The results demonstrated that only the opaque idiom comprehension was predicted from the theory of mind scores (particularly from the second-order false-belief task). The disadvantage of this for the current assessment is that the idioms tested were French and they cannot be directly translated for use in an English assessment.

Cain et al (2009) tested transparent and opaque idiom comprehension in 40 British children (23 girls and 17 boys): 20 year 3 children (mean age 7:10), 20 year 5 children (mean age 9:11); and 19 adults (12 women and 7 men, mean age 19:04) from the North West of England. 24 idioms were used in the test. 12 were common British idioms and 12 were novel idioms that were translations of real non-English European idioms for which there are no equivalents in British English. 6 were familiar transparent idioms (eg ‘to skate on thin ice’); 6 were familiar opaque (eg ‘to take the biscuit’); 6 were novel transparent (eg ‘to try to make a hole in water’) and 6 were novel opaque (eg ‘to whistle in your thumb’). Idioms were presented in and out of a supportive story context and were assessed via a multiple-choice test. They found that even the 5 year-olds were able to use semantic analysis to understand the transparent idioms and were sensitive to meaning in context. They reported that children age 7 years and under benefited from transparency only when idioms are presented in context, whereas 9-year-olds benefited from transparency when idioms were presented out of context as well. However, they also demonstrated that idiom knowledge was still not fully developed in 11 and 12 year-olds. The use of non- British idioms in this study means that the results cannot be compared to the current researcher’s study which uses only familiar British idioms.

Factors influencing idiom comprehension

The choice of tasks used to measure idiom comprehension may influence the results. Idiom explanation tasks may disadvantage younger children due to their less well developed expressive language and comprehension skills compared to older children (Cain et al, 2009). The preferred method of assessing idiom comprehension is therefore by using a multiple-choice task to test idioms in context.

1.4.2 Studies of idiom comprehension in children with communication