Semantic properties, aptness, familiarity, conventionality, and interpretive diversity scores for 84 metaphors and similes

Abstract

For 84 unique topic-vehicle pairs (e.g., knowledge-power), participants produced associated properties for the topics (e.g., knowledge), vehicles (e.g., power), metaphors (knowledge is power), and similes (knowledge is like power). For these properties, we also obtained frequency, saliency, and connotativeness scores (i.e., how much the properties deviated from the denotative or literal meaning). In addition, we examined whether expression type (metaphor vs. simile) impacted the interpretations produced. We found that metaphors activated more salient properties than did similes, but the connotativeness levels for metaphor and simile salient properties were similar. Also, the two types of expressions did not differ across a wide range of measures collected: aptness, conventionality, familiarity, and interpretive diversity scores. Combined with the property lists, these interpretation norms constitute a thorough collection of data about metaphors and similes, employing the same topic-vehicle words, which can be used in psycholinguistic and cognitive neuroscience studies to investigate how the two types of expressions are represented and processed. These norms should be especially useful for studies that examine the online processing and interpretation of metaphors and similes, as well as for studies examining how properties related to metaphors and similes affect the interpretations produced.

Stimulus needs are a moving target: 240 additional matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor

“…The earliest stimulus set, by Katz et al (1988), provides 204 literary and 260 nonliterary nominal metaphors, each rated on ten dimensions (comprehensibility, ease of interpretation, metaphoricity, metaphor goodness, metaphor imagery, subject imagery, predicate imagery, familiarity, semantic relatedness, and number of alternative interpretations). More recently, Roncero and de Almeida (2015) provided 84 nominal metaphors and matched similes, normed in terms of property associations, aptness, familiarity, conventionality, saliency, and connotativeness. Informative in their own right, the Katz stimuli have also been a valuable resource in metaphor research since their publication, as well as the only normed set of literary metaphors we are aware of.…”

“…However, these items have not been normed on some of the characteristics germane to current debates concerning metaphor. By contrast, Roncero and de Almeida's (2015) carefully crafted metaphor-simile pairs are optimized for addressing current, competing cognitive models of metaphor comprehension (e.g., comparison vs. categorization mechanisms), and for testing the predictions of the GSH. However, without manipulations of the semantics, grammatical category, or sensory associations of base terms, neither stimulus set can address the specific neural hypotheses outlined above regarding sensorimotor grounding or metaphor type.…”

Are subjective ratings of metaphors a red herring? The big two dimensions of metaphoric sentences

“…To gauge the construct validity of sentence-level ratings of metaphors, we present the results of two experiments and an analysis of four existing large-scale datasets of metaphorical sentences (from Cardillo et al, 2010Cardillo et al, , 2016Katz et al, 1988;Roncero & de Almeida, 2015). In both experiments, we manipulated the processing fluency of metaphors by changing the context in which they were presented.…”

“…In Experiment 2, we showed that the same context manipulation affected ratings of the comprehensibility, familiarity, aptness, surprisingness, and figurativeness of the metaphoric sentences. Both of these findings raise concerns about the validity of familiarity and aptness ratings, in particular because of how these constructs have been defined and treated in the metaphor-processing literature (e.g., Cardillo et al, 2010, Katz et al, 1988Roncero & de Almeida, 2015).…”

“…A common method is to collect subjective ratings from naive participants. For instance, several stimulus sets of metaphoric sentences have been developed with normed ratings of such dimensions as familiarity, aptness, metaphoricity, and imagery (e.g., Cardillo, Schmidt, Kranjec, & Chatterjee, 2010;Cardillo, Watson, & Chatterjee, 2016;Katz, Paivio, Marschark, & Clark, 1988;Roncero & de Almeida, 2015).…”