TY - JOUR
T1 - Alignment in the processing of metaphor
AU - Gentner, Dedre
AU - Wolff, Phillip
N1 - Funding Information:
The research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9511757 and Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-92-J-1098 awarded to the first author. We thank Brian Bowdle, Arthur Markman, Evan Heit, Jerry Balakrishnan, and the entire Similarity and Analogy group at Northwestern University for many helpful discussions.
PY - 1997/10
Y1 - 1997/10
N2 - This research investigates the process of metaphor comprehension. We compare two classes of processing algorithms: those or deriving an abstraction from he base (orvehicle) and then project it to the target (ortopic) and those that begin by aligning the representations of the terms and then project further inferences from the base to the target. To decide between these accounts, we recorded subjects' time to interpret metaphors primed by either the base term or the target term (or both or neither). Abstraction-based models predict that priming by the base should lead to faster metaphor comprehension than priming by the target; alignment-based models predict no such advantage. Across a series of experiments, the results were most consistent with alignment-first processing. No base advantage was found, with the single exception of metaphors having highly conventional meanings and low (metaphorical) similarity. Further, high-similarity metaphors were interpreted faster than low-similarity metaphors, consistent with the alignment view. We conjecture that this pattern may result from a shift in processing with conventionalization: novel metaphors may be understood by alignment and conventional metaphors by abstraction.
AB - This research investigates the process of metaphor comprehension. We compare two classes of processing algorithms: those or deriving an abstraction from he base (orvehicle) and then project it to the target (ortopic) and those that begin by aligning the representations of the terms and then project further inferences from the base to the target. To decide between these accounts, we recorded subjects' time to interpret metaphors primed by either the base term or the target term (or both or neither). Abstraction-based models predict that priming by the base should lead to faster metaphor comprehension than priming by the target; alignment-based models predict no such advantage. Across a series of experiments, the results were most consistent with alignment-first processing. No base advantage was found, with the single exception of metaphors having highly conventional meanings and low (metaphorical) similarity. Further, high-similarity metaphors were interpreted faster than low-similarity metaphors, consistent with the alignment view. We conjecture that this pattern may result from a shift in processing with conventionalization: novel metaphors may be understood by alignment and conventional metaphors by abstraction.
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U2 - 10.1006/jmla.1997.2527
DO - 10.1006/jmla.1997.2527
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0031256866
VL - 37
SP - 331
EP - 355
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
SN - 0749-596X
IS - 3
ER -