A Study On Spatial Metaphor Of Preschool Children’s Moral Concept

In order to understand various abstract and difficult concepts in the world or to express them conveniently,people use familiar and vivid things or concepts in life to understand unfamiliar and abstract concepts.Therefore,there are a large number of metaphorical expressions in language.As an important part of conceptual metaphor,spatial metaphor is a type of metaphor that maps the concrete and obvious things(space)in life to abstract concepts.For example,positive moral words are usually associated with the "up" position,high and wise;Negative moral words are often associated with "down" directions,such as lowbrow or low grade.A large number of previous studies have confirmed the psychological reality of spatial metaphors of adult moral concepts(vertical,left-right,and anterior-posterior).Only some studies have taken preschool children as the subjects,confirming that children in middle and senior classes have also initially formed vertical spatial metaphors of moral concepts.Therefore,this study tried to up and down,left and right sides,front and back,three groups of experiments to explore the spatial orientation,in order to understand whether there is a moral concept and preschool children before and after the up and down,left and right sides,spatial orientation metaphor,its development trend and the relationship of the age,and according to the research results and children’s physical and mental development characteristics of moral education related Suggestions are put forward.Based on the review of existing studies,this study proposes the hypothesis that preschoolers already have the metaphorical connections of "moral is upper,immoral is lower","moral is right,immoral is left",and "moral is first,immoral is second".A total of 198 randomly selected preschoolers were included in this study.All subjects had normal visual or corrected vision,normal color vision,and no dyslexia.In experiment 2,all subjects were right-handed.In Experiment 1,we studied the development of vertical spatial metaphor of moral concept in preschool children,and recorded the frequency of placing different types of pictures above or below toy dogs.In Experiment 2,we studied the development of spatial metaphors around moral concepts in preschool children,and recorded the frequency of placing different types of pictures on the left or right side of toy dogs.Experiment 3 studied the spatial development before and after the moral concept of preschool children,and recorded the frequency of placing different types of pictures in front or behind the toy dog.Finally,we draw the following conclusions: First,children in small classes have not yet formed the upper and lower spatial metaphors of moral concepts,while children in medium and large classes have initially formed the upper and lower spatial metaphors of moral concepts,which can be specifically expressed as "morality is above,immorality is below".The strength of metaphorical connection increases with the growth of age.Second,children in small classes have not yet formed the left and right spatial metaphors of moral concepts,while children in medium and large classes have initially formed the left and right spatial metaphors of moral concepts,which are specifically shown as "morality is on the right,immorality is on the left".The strength of metaphorical connection increases with the increase of age.Third,children in small classes have not yet formed the metaphors in front and back of moral concepts,while children in medium and large classes have initially formed the metaphors in front and back of moral concepts,which can be specifically shown as "morality comes first,immorality comes second".The strength of metaphorical connection increases with the increase of age.In conclusion,preschool children in middle and big classes have psychological reality of spatial metaphor of moral concepts(upper and lower,left and right,front and back).Based on the results of the experiment,this study puts forward two educational suggestions on how to exert the advantages of metaphor and avoid the disadvantages of metaphor.Firstly,the advantages of spatial metaphor can be exerted to help preschool children understand and master the moral concept by means of attracting attention,teacher training,teaching application,and environmental creation.In addition,attention should also be paid to the daily life to avoid longterm placement of children to a position associated with negative concepts,so as not to have a negative impact on the self-cognition of preschool children.