Spoken metaphor comprehension: Evaluation using the metaphor interference effect

Chouinard, Brea; Volden, Joanne; Hollinger, John; Cummine, Jacqueline

doi:10.1080/0163853x.2018.1455166

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…The MIE has been replicated in numerous paradigms (e.g., Chouinard et al, 2019;Keysar, 1989;Pierce et al, 2010) for both novel and familiar metaphors (Glucksberg et al, 1982;Hermann et al, 2013;Wolff & Gentner, 2000) and arises even in counter-intuitive scenarios. For example, a metaphor such as some suburbs are parasites becomes anomalous when reversed to some parasites are suburbs.…”

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confidence: 91%

Flute birds and creamy skies: The metaphor interference effect in modifier–noun phrases.

Al-Azary¹,

Gagné²,

Spalding³

2021

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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People take longer to determine that metaphoric sentences (e.g., some birds are flutes) are literally false compared to anomalous sentences (e.g., some birds are pickles). This metaphor interference effect (MIE) shows that metaphorical interpretations are automatically computed even in contexts and tasks that only require literal interpretations. Although a well-replicated finding, the MIE has only been investigated in sentence stimuli in which the metaphoric composition is explicitly stated (such that birds are asserted to be flutes). This raises questions about the generalizability of the MIE because (a) A is B metaphors are rare in discourse and (b) other metaphor variants, such as flute bird, are unspecified in their metaphoric composition (i.e., do not specifically assert which concept, if any, is metaphorical). In this experiment, we investigated whether metaphoric modifier-noun phrases such as flute bird and creamy sky produce a MIE. In addition, we explored if word-level semantic variables (semantic neighborhood density and concreteness) play a role in the MIE. We asked participants to determine if modifier-noun phrases refer to things that literally exist or not. We found a MIE in which metaphoric phrases (e.g., flute bird, creamy sky) took longer to judge as literally false relative to scrambled counterparts (e.g., flute sky, creamy bird). Moreover, we found that word-level semantic variables affect the magnitude of the MIE only for adjective-noun phrases. Therefore, metaphoric meaning can be automatically extracted from metaphoric compounds, suggesting that the MIE is more robust than previously demonstrated. Public Significance StatementThis study demonstrates that people can automatically grasp metaphoric meaning from two-word phrases such as shark lawyer or silky sunset, even without a figurative context. Moreover, people are initially more perceptive to the nuances of adjective-noun metaphors (e.g., silky sunset) than nounnoun metaphors (e.g., shark lawyer). These findings have implications for communication because people encounter metaphor in daily life.

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