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

Abstract

As the cognitive neuroscience of metaphor has evolved, so too have the theoretical questions of greatest interest. To keep pace with these developments, in the present study we generated a large set of metaphoric and literal sentence pairs ideally suited to addressing the current methodological and conceptual needs of metaphor researchers. In particular, the need has emerged to distinguish metaphors along three dimensions: the grammatical class of their base terms, the sensorimotor features of their base terms, and the syntactic form in which the base terms appear. To meet this need, we generated nominal metaphors (and matched literal sentences) using entity nouns as the base terms, with the intention that they be used in concert with already published sets of predicate metaphors or nominal metaphors using event nouns. Using the results of three norming experiments, we provide 120 pairs of closely matched metaphoric and literal sentences that are characterized along 14 dimensions: 11 at the sentence level (length, frequency, concreteness, familiarity, naturalness, imageability, figurativeness, interpretability, ease of interpretation, valence, and valence judgment reaction time), and three related to the base term (visual, motion, and auditory imagery). These items extend previously published stimuli, filling an extant gap in metaphor research and allowing for tests of new behavioral and neural hypotheses about metaphor.

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

“…Processing fluency varied considerably as a function of context; figurativeness was fairly stable, in comparison. Then we analyzed four large datasets of metaphoric sentences, in which groups of naive participants subjectively rated metaphors along a variety of psychological dimensions such as familiarity, aptness, and metaphoricity (Cardillo et al, 2010(Cardillo et al, , 2016Katz et al, 1988;Roncero & de Almeida, 2015). Exploratory factor analyses on each dataset revealed that most of the variability in the rated dimensions (roughly 80%) could be explained by our two underlying dimensions: processing fluency and figurativeness.…”

“…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.…”

“…Finally, we investigated data from four norming studies of metaphorical sentences (Cardillo et al, 2010(Cardillo et al, , 2016Katz et al, 1988;Roncero & de Almeida, 2015), by conducting a factor analysis on each. Consistent with the analysis of the ratings data from Experiment 2, we found that most variability in the subjective ratings of metaphorical sentences in these datasets could be explained by two underlying factors, which also seem to reflect processing fluency and figurativeness.…”

“…Several stimulus sets of metaphorical (and nonmetaphorical) sentences have been developed to test theories of metaphor processing. Here we consider four: from Cardillo et al (2010;Cardillo et al, 2016), Katz et al (1988), and Roncero and de Almeida (2015). In each, naive participants rated metaphorical sentences along a set of target dimensions.…”

“…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).…”