“Blue tastes like salt. It just does”: Exploring generational differences in the construction of cross-sensory metaphors

Abstract

Metaphors improve communication between children and adults, which can be challenging due to differences in experiences. Cross-sensory metaphors convey qualities associated with one sense using terms from another, e.g. a “sharp smell” and could thus improve generational communication by bridging differences in sensory cognition. We observed children (8-11yrs, n=65), young adults (18-24yrs, n=51) and older adults (60-85yrs, n=38) playing Sense-O-Nary, a variation of Pictionary where players construct and interpret cross-sensory metaphors, and analysed differences in metaphor type, degree of elaboration, and association strategies. We found that children relied on “familiar experiences” for metaphor construction, while adults used more diverse association strategies. Degree of elaboration was consistent across ages for tactile and visual stimuli but differed for olfactory stimuli. All groups used “active” metaphors most commonly, but children showed more use of “implicit”, “similes”, and “personification”. We present designs that demonstrate how these characterisations could be leveraged to improve intergenerational communication.