Mary Beth Neff

• Handley-Miner, Isaac J.; Bochynska, Agata; Buttliere, Brett; Chung, Kai Li; Elsherif, Mahmoud & Graham, Christopher J. [Show all 14 contributors for this article] (2026). A Call for Greater Transparency in Piloting. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science (AMPPS). ISSN 2515-2459. 9(4), p. 1–14. doi: 10.1177/25152459261487966. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  A pilot study is a preliminary investigation conducted before a full-scale research study. Although piloting is a common and valuable part of the research process, pilot studies are not systematically reported (or even acknowledged) in the psychology literature. In this article, we argue that establishing norms for regularly acknowledging preliminary research phases can improve many aspects of psychological research. Specifically, reporting pilot-study information can help researchers provide a more complete record of the research process, reveal selection biases in research designs that may affect the generalizability of findings, evaluate others’ research more accurately, learn from other researchers’ successes and failures, uphold ethical responsibilities, and improve the methodological practice of piloting. We conclude with three concrete suggestions for near-term changes to help pilot reporting become standard practice: Scientific communities and institutions should develop simple pilot-reporting templates, journals should provide clear pilot-reporting guidance for authors, and authors should acknowledge when pilot studies were run and share relevant materials and data. Current reporting standards favor conclusive and polished research narratives, but such narratives are the end product of a complex scientific process that should also be shared. A truly transparent science should spotlight processes, such as piloting, that underpin the conclusions scientific articles draw.

• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2025). Decoupling literalist behavior from children’s early metaphor comprehension abilities. Language Development Research. 5(2), p. 130–171. doi: 10.34842/LDR2025-819. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Children’s literalist responses to metaphor comprehension tasks are often taken to indicate deficient metaphor comprehension. We aimed to decouple this assumed (literalist) performance–(metaphor) competence link and investigate whether children’s observed literalism is best explained by an early difficulty with metaphor. We assessed 3- to 7-year-olds’ metaphor comprehension abilities using different novel functional, attributional, and psychological metaphors in a between-subjects design. We found that when not provided with literal options, children could derive metaphorical interpretations successfully. This was further supported by longer reaction times for metaphorical over literal interpretations. However, when literal options were available, even adults predominantly chose them over metaphorical interpretations. These findings challenge the view that children’s literalism stems solely from difficulty with metaphor and urge researchers to more clearly distinguish studies assessing sensitivity to metaphorical meaning from those investigating the ability to prioritize a metaphorical interpretation over a literal one.

• Neff, Mary Beth & Martin, Alia (2022). Do face-to-face interactions support 6-month-olds' understanding of the communicative function of speech? Infancy. ISSN 1525-0008. doi: 10.1111/infa.12507. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Infants by 6 months recognize that speech communicates information between third parties. We investigated whether 6-month-olds always expect speech to communicate or whether they also consider social features of communication, like how interlocutors engage with one another. A small sample of infants watched an actor (the Speaker) choose one of two objects to play with (the target). When the Speaker could no longer reach her target object, she turned to a new actor (the Listener) and said a nonsense word. During speech, the actors were either face-to-face, the Speaker was facing away from the Listener, or the reverse. When the actors had been face-to-face, infants looked longer when the Listener selected the non-target object compared to the target. Infants looked equally regardless of what the Listener chose when either actor had been disengaged. Area-of-interest gaze coding suggests that infants were similarly interested in the interaction across conditions, but their pattern of attention to Speaker and Listener differed when the Listener was disengaged during speech. Although these experiments should be replicated with a larger sample, the findings provide initial evidence that 6-month-olds do not expect speech alone to communicate, but also attend to the social context in which speech is produced.

• Hilton, Courtney; Moser, Cody; Bertolo, Mila; Lee-Rubin, Harry; Amir, Dorsa & Bainbridge, Constance [Show all 43 contributors for this article] (2022). Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures. Nature Human Behaviour. doi: 10.1038/s41562-022-01410-x. Full text in Research Archive
• Nguyen, Tram Thi Bao; Balanovic, Jovana; Aley, Joanne & Neff, Mary Beth (2022). (Preprint) Human dimensions of Predator Free 2050: A literature overview of social and behavioral research. SocArXiv. doi: 10.31235/osf.io/f98m3. Full text in Research Archive

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• Neff, Mary Beth; Ganea, Patricia & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2024). "Towers can't wear clothes": What happens when children's reality and literal biases clash? Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth; Ganea, Patricia & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2024). "Towers can't wear clothes": What happens when children's reality and literal biases clash? Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Elizabeth; Bochynska, Agata & Force, Pilot Reporting Task (2024). To pilot or not to pilot, that's not the question: developing a template for transparent pilot study reporting. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2023). Understanding the relationship between children's literalist behavior and metaphor comprehension development. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2023). Does children's early literalist behavior stem from difficulties with metaphor comprehension? Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2023). Uncoupling children's literal bias from their metaphor comprehension abilities. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Bochynska, Agata (2023). Unconference on (Transparent) Piloting: current practices and ways forward. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth; Ganea, Patricia & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2023). Do children interpret metaphors literally because they are fantastical thinkers? Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2023). Unpacking the literal bias in children’s metaphor comprehension development. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2022). Exploring the literal bias in children's metaphor comprehension development. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2022). Exploring the literal bias in children's metaphor comprehension development. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2022). Exploring the literal bias in children's metaphor comprehension development. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth & Falkum, Ingrid Lossius (2022). Exploring the literal bias in children's metaphor comprehension development. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth (2022). Uncoupling children's literal bias from their metaphor comprehension abilities. Full text in Research Archive
• Neff, Mary Beth (2025). Challenging the Metaphor Deficit: Unpacking Children's 'Literally Biased' Communicative Development. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis explored children’s literalist preferences in the context of their metaphor comprehension development. I aimed to answer the following key questions: Does a preference for literal interpretations signal a metaphor deficit (Article I), or is it part of a broader cognitive development where children gradually refine their interpretive skills with age, as suggested by prior research (Article II)? Alternatively, I propose that these preferences may reflect a stronger expectation for communication to be literal, challenging existing explanations (Article III). Article I assesses 3- to 7-year-olds’ and adults’ understanding of novel metaphors and finds that children successfully interpret metaphors when no literal options are available. However, when literal options are present, both children and adults choose them nearly exclusively. Article II explores whether 4- to 8-year-olds and adults can use prior discourse context to reject implausible literal interpretations. Results indicate that while children are able to derive metaphorical meanings from context, literal meaning has a more significant impact on their reference resolution than real-world plausibility compared with adults. Article III examines 3- to 5-year-old children’s and adults’ perceptions of literal versus metaphorical speech within a ‘trust-in-testimony framework.’ Both groups rated literally accurate descriptions higher than equally appropriate metaphors. Although older children could endorse metaphorical speakers over inaccurate ones, younger children struggled to accept metaphorical uses of language. Qualitative data further indicate that children have a stronger expectation for literal speech. Overall, this thesis found no evidence of a metaphor deficit among younger children nor a direct link between literalist preferences and metaphor comprehension. Instead, children’s preference for literal accuracy seems to reflect a conceptual difference in how they prioritize literal over metaphorical meaning. The findings call for a shift in metaphor comprehension research away from deficit-based assumptions, moving forward by (1) avoiding the conflation of literalist responses with general task difficulties and (2) clearly distinguishing between studies aimed at assessing sensitivity to metaphorical meaning and those investigating when metaphorical interpretations are favored over literal ones. I conclude by emphasizing the need to move beyond neurotypical, adult-centered communicative models in research on pragmatic development.

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