Children in the World of Allegory: the Key Role of Comparison Skills and Abstract Thinking

Abstract

This publication shows the potential of pre-school age children to understand and use allegory, focusing specifically on the core of the ability to interpret the allegory of proverbs and sayings. A connection between comparison skills and allegory interpretation skills has been statistically proved, confirming that the image-based way of thinking is typical for the ages under research and allowing us to define visualization as a principal stage in the process of getting to the meaning of allegory. The publication also gives statistical arguments which support a connection between the development of the ability for abstract thinking and allegory interpretation skills, i.e. a child with better-developed abstract thinking ability will display a higher capacity for interpreting allegorical meanings.

Keywords

• allegory / pre-school age / proverbs and sayings / comparison skills / abstract thinking