Comprehension problems of embodied metaphors in 5 to 7 year-old hearing impaired Persian speaking children

Background: In cognitive linguistics, the key factor in understanding of the abstract and metaphorical concepts is the individuals’ embodied experiences sensed by their body. Therefore, a better understanding of abstract concepts requires healthy senses and feelings. Hearing impairment leads to disorders in understanding abstract concepts. The present study is aimed to investigate the differences between 5 to 7 year-old Persian-speaking hearing-impaired children and their normal counterparts in terms of understanding embodied conceptual metaphors. Methods: The present study was conducted on twenty 5 to 7 year-old Persian-speaking children with moderate to severe hearing impairment. The study investigated the participants’ understanding of abstract concepts when using embodied metaphors in four sensory-motor organs (the eyes, ears, hands and legs) through conducting a researcher-made task including both audio and audio-visual sections. The results of the hearing-impaired children were compared with the performance of 200 normal children. Results: The findings of the present study indicated a significantly lower mean score of hearing-impaired children compared to their normal peers. The mean score of hearing-impaired participants was 9.6, while their normal counterparts scored 24.51. Moreover, it was indicated that the performance of 6 to 7 year-old hearing-impaired children was better than the 5 to 6 year-old children. Conclusion: Despite the quick reception through hearing aids, hearing-impaired children are unable to understand abstract and metaphorical concepts although they have an acceptable language competence unless receiving a direct professional training to understand the metaphors. The hearing-impaired children tend to interpret the metaphorical concepts literally and fail to understand the abstract metaphorical concepts. The findings of the present study clearly revealed the necessity of designing a cognitive rehabilitation protocol dedicated to the abstract concepts