Abstract
This study adds to the literature addressing the input preschool children receive regarding mental state language by systematically investigating input that is metaphoric in nature. An analysis of the frequency of five body-part terms in adult speech and in storybooks directed to children reveals that the term heart is regularly used in figurative expressions to reflect a variety of emotions, both positive (e.g., love, kindness) and negative (e.g., hatred, sadness), especially in storybook text. Other salient body-part terms (i.e., brain, eye, foot, stomach) are used metaphorically much less frequently in speech or stories directed to preschoolers. The role of this input for children’s acquisition of mentalistic language and for their emerging theories of psychology and biology is discussed.
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