Exploring Proverb Recognition Skill among Adolescents

Abstract

Proverbs are figurative expressions capturing values and wisdom of our society. Literature suggests that proverb development begins during adolescence and continues throughout adulthood. Thus, the main purpose of the study was to check awareness of proverbs among adolescents in comparison to adults. For this study, proverb recognition task consisting of 20 proverbs and 20 non-proverbs were presented visually using DmDx software to participants of Group I (10-14 years) and Group II (18-24 years). A key press reaction time involving two alternate forced choice response format was adopted. Results of this cross sectional study design revealed that Group II had faster reaction time and higher accuracy rate compared to Group I and was statistically significant at 95% confidence level. The results documented are attributed to the meta-semantic hypothesis, which suggests Group I may have been less exposed to the proverbs hence processing it as an unfamiliar expression. This leads to active analysis of each word in the phrase, which is in contrast to how a familiar expression is processed by Group II subjects because of frequent exposure. In addition, the difference in lifestyle followed by the participants is also another contributing factor. Overall, the results give us valuable insight on the age related differences in strategies used for proverb recognition.