Character Intimacy Influences the Processing of Metaphoric Utterances During Narrative Comprehension

Horton, William S.

doi:10.1080/10926488.2013.797735

Cited by 26 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…metaphors in engaging readers or listeners at the emotional level, by showing enhanced brain activation of structures associated with the processing of evolutionary relevant or emotionally salient stimuli-that is, the left amygdala-in response to metaphorical formulations compared to literal ones Citron & Goldberg, 2014;Forgács et al, 2012), and enhanced heart rate responses to metaphorical translations of English metaphors to Spanish, compared to literal translations (Rojo, Ramos, & Valenzuela, 2014). This evidence confirms pioneering behavioral research showing more productive use of metaphors when describing one's own feelings during autobiographical events than when describing the event itself , and it is further supported by more recent behavioral research showing enhanced empathy and theory of mind in response to stories containing metaphorical language (Horton, 2007(Horton, , 2013.…”

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confidence: 72%

Affective and psycholinguistic norms for German conceptual metaphors (COMETA)

2020

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Figurative expressions have been shown to play a special role in evoking affective responses, as compared to their literal counterparts. This study provides the first database of conceptual metaphors that includes ratings of affective properties beyond psycholinguistic properties. To allow for the investigation of natural reading processes, 64 natural stories were created, half of which contained two or three conceptual metaphors that relied on the same mapping, whereas the other half contained the metaphors' literal counterparts. To allow for tighter control and manipulation of the different properties, 120 isolated sentences were also created, half of which contained one metaphorical word, which was replaced by its literal rendering in the other half. All stimuli were rated for emotional valence, arousal, imageability, and metaphoricity, and the pairs of metaphorical and literal stimuli were rated for their similarity in meaning. A measure of complexity was determined and computed. The stories were also rated for naturalness and understandability, and the sentences for familiarity. Differences between the metaphorical and literal stimuli and relationships between the affective and psycholinguistic variables were explored and are discussed in light of extant empirical research. In a nutshell, the metaphorical stimuli were rated as being higher in emotional arousal and easier to imagine than their literal counterparts, thus confirming a role of metaphor in evoking emotion and in activating sensorimotor representations. Affective variables showed the typical U-shaped relationship consistently found in word databases, whereby increasingly positive and negative valence is associated with higher arousal. Finally, interesting differences between the stories and sentences were observed.

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confidence: 72%

Affective and psycholinguistic norms for German conceptual metaphors (COMETA)

2020

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“…To our knowledge, this finding has not been directly replicated, though Horton (2013) did find a related result. In Horton (2013), participants read brief stories that described interactions between two characters portrayed as being familiar with one another to varying degrees. The critical finding was that readers were as fast to read metaphoric utterances as literal utterances in the context of close, familiar relationships, but were slower to read metaphoric utterances in the context of unfamiliar relationships, indicating the degree of character intimacy played a role in construing the meaning of the text.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Use of metaphor serves as a cue to gender identity (Hussey & Katz, 2009), knowledge of a person's occupation aids in the recognition of a statement as metaphoric or not (Katz & Pexman, 1997), and social knowledge is a factor involved in shaping use and understanding of metaphoric discourse (Gibbs & Cameron, 2008). The most direct empirical evidence for Cohen's hypothesis is found in Horton (2007) and is conceptually replicated in Horton (2013). Horton (2007) presented participants with texts containing conversations between two characters whose relationship is ambiguous.…”

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confidence: 99%

Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind

Bowes

Katz

2015

Mem Cogn

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In 3 experiments we show that, relative to reading literal sentences, reading metaphor enhances performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), an instrument meant to measure first-order theory of mind. In each experiment participants read metaphorical or literal sentences in different contexts and afterwards completed an ostensibly unrelated task, the RMET. In Experiment 1, participants were presented metaphorical or literal sentences in short discourse contexts and were asked questions about the characters in the stories. We found that when one of the characters used metaphor, they were rated as having a closer relationship. A novel finding is that the degree to which the characters are perceived as being more intimate in the metaphor condition, the higher their scores on the RMET. In Experiment 2, participants created fictive contexts to prompting literal or metaphorical sentences. This writing task was followed by the RMET. Participants who created contexts for the metaphors scored significantly higher on the RMET. In Experiment 3, participants read metaphors or literal counterparts without any discourse contexts. Once again, participants scored higher on the RMET after reading metaphorical as opposed to literal sentences. Additional analyses across the 3 experiments revealed that metaphors but not literal counterparts were associated with fictive contexts that contained reference to mental states and idioms with emotional content (Experiment 2), were associated with a sense of intimacy between interlocutors (Experiment 1), the presence of affective words in the created context (Experiment 2), and association with a human agent when context was not presented (Experiment 3).

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“…Furthermore, idioms are used more frequently when formulating complaints, and even more so in the presence of a non-empathic interlocutor (14,15). More recent evidence has also shown that the use of metaphors in short narratives makes the reader perceive a higher degree of intimacy between the story characters (16)(17)(18) and enhances theory of mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to infer characters' intentions and mental states (18).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metaphorical Sentences Are More Emotionally Engaging than Their Literal Counterparts

Citron

Goldberg

2014

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

227

109

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Why do people so often use metaphorical expressions when literal paraphrases are readily available? This study focuses on a comparison of metaphorical statements involving the source domain of taste (e.g., "She looked at him sweetly") and their literal paraphrases (e.g., "She looked at him kindly"). Metaphorical and literal sentences differed only in one word and were normed for length, familiarity, imageability, emotional valence, and arousal. Our findings indicate that conventional metaphorical expressions are more emotionally evocative than literal expressions, as the amygdala and the anterior portion of the hippocampus were more active in the metaphorical sentences. They also support the idea that even conventional metaphors can be grounded in sensorimotor and perceptual representations in that primary and secondary gustatory areas (lateral OFC, frontal operculum, anterior insula) were more active as well. A comparison of the individual words that distinguished the metaphorical and literal sentences revealed greater activation in the lateral OFC and the frontal operculum for the taste-related words, supporting the claim that these areas are relevant to taste.

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Character Intimacy Influences the Processing of Metaphoric Utterances During Narrative Comprehension

Cited by 26 publications

References 42 publications

Affective and psycholinguistic norms for German conceptual metaphors (COMETA)

Affective and psycholinguistic norms for German conceptual metaphors (COMETA)

Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind

Metaphorical Sentences Are More Emotionally Engaging than Their Literal Counterparts

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