Topic—vehicle interaction in metaphor comprehension

Property comparison models of metaphor comprehension assume that the topic and vehicle terms in metaphors are both understood to be referring to their conventional literal referents. In contrast, the interactive property attribution model (Glucksberg, McGlone, & Manfredi, 1997) assumes that the vehicle is understood to be referring to a metaphoric category that includes the topic's literal referent as a member. A priming paradigm was used to test the implications of these different models. Prior to interpreting a metaphor, participants read (1) the topic or vehicle concept alone, (2) a sentence ascribing a metaphor-relevant property to one concept, or (3) a sentence ascribing a metaphor-irrelevant property to one concept. All of the prime types facilitated metaphor comprehension with the exception of sentences ascribing metaphor-irrelevant properties to vehicles. The failure of these sentences (but not their topic counterparts) to facilitate metaphor comprehension is attributable to their priming an inappropriate literal interpretation of the vehicle term. These results are consistent with the claim that irrelevant information is suppressed during language comprehension (Gernsbacher, 1990) and support the interactive property attribution model.     

The effects of metaphorical and literal comprehension processes on lexical decision latency of sentence components

Two lexical decision experiments were conducted to further investigate the notion that metaphor comprehension involves the formation of a new association between topic and vehicle. Experiment 1 was essentially a replication and extension of Camac and Glucksberg (1984) demonstrating that known word associate pairs show a significant lexical decision latency advantage over their randomly paired counterparts, while topic/vehicle word pairs drawn from apt metaphors do not. The results of Experiment 1 confirm their initial findings even when printed word frequency of the two pair types is held equivalent (a factor not controlled for in the original Camac and Glucksberg study). This result suggests that preexisting topic/vehicle similarity is not an important factor in metaphor comprehension. Experiment 2 was an attempt to detect the hypothesized shift in attribute salience that results in the formation of a new association between topic and vehicle during metaphor comprehension. In Experiment 2, subjects made lexical decisions on topic/vehicle word pairs that were preceded by a paragraph designed to induce either a metaphorical or literal interpretation. For many subjects, a latency advantage was observed for topic/vehicle pairs preceded by a metaphorical context as compared to a mismatching literal context. This finding suggests that metaphor comprehension is a dynamic process which modifies preexisting topic/vehicle similarity, and that metaphorical interpretations are facilitated by extended context.Portions of this paper were submitted to the Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Special thanks to Dr. Veronica J. Dark for her comments on theoretical aspects of this work, as well as her assistance with the use of microcomputers for the collection and analysis of data. The feedback provided by Thomas Andre, Lloyd L. Avant, Harry S. Gill, Donald H. Schuster, and Horabail, Venkatagiri is greatly appreciated.     

Is Milkman a superhero like Batman? Constituent morphological priming in compound words

In the present study, we examined morphological decomposition of Basque compound words in a series of masked priming lexical decision experiments. In Experiment 1, Basque compound words could be briefly preceded by other compounds that shared either the first or second constituent, or by unrelated noncompound words. Results showed a significant priming effect for words that shared a constituent, independently of its position. In Experiment 2, compound words were preceded by other compound words that shared one of their constituents, but in a different lexeme position (e.g., the first constituent of the compound that acted as a prime was the second constituent of the compound that acted as a target). Results again showed a constituent priming effect (i.e., location in the string is not necessary for priming to occur). In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that these priming effects were not due to mere form overlap: pairs of noncompound words that shared either the beginning or the ending chunk did not produce a priming effect. Taken together, the present results converge with previous data on orthographic/morphological priming and provide evidence favouring early morphological decomposition.     

Metaphor comprehension: A computational theory

Metaphor comprehension involves an interaction between the meaning of the topic and the vehicle terms of the metaphor. Meaning is represented by vectors in a high-dimensional semantic space. Predication modifies the topic vector by merging it with selected features of the vehicle vector. The resulting metaphor vector can be evaluated by comparing it with known landmarks in the semantic space. Thus, metaphorical predication is treated in the present model in exactly the same way as literal predication. Some experimental results concerning metaphor comprehension are simulated within this framework, such as the nonreversibility of metaphors, priming of metaphors with literal statements, and priming of literal statements with metaphors.     

Computational exploration of metaphor comprehension processes using a semantic space model

Recent metaphor research has revealed that metaphor comprehension involves both categorization and comparison processes. This finding has triggered the following central question: Which property determines the choice between these two processes for metaphor comprehension? Three competing views have been proposed to answer this question: the conventionality view ( Bowdle & Gentner, 2005 ), aptness view ( Glucksberg & Haught, 2006b ), and interpretive diversity view ( Utsumi, 2007 ); these views, respectively, argue that vehicle conventionality, metaphor aptness, and interpretive diversity determine the choice between the categorization and comparison processes. This article attempts to answer the question regarding which views are plausible by using cognitive modeling and computer simulation based on a semantic space model. In the simulation experiment, categorization and comparison processes are modeled in a semantic space constructed by latent semantic analysis. These two models receive word vectors for the constituent words of a metaphor and compute a vector for the metaphorical meaning. The resulting vectors can be evaluated according to the degree to which they mimic the human interpretation of the same metaphor; the maximum likelihood estimation determines which of the two models better explains the human interpretation. The result of the model selection is then predicted by three metaphor properties (i.e., vehicle conventionality, aptness, and interpretive diversity) to test the three views. The simulation experiment for Japanese metaphors demonstrates that both interpretive diversity and vehicle conventionality affect the choice between the two processes. On the other hand, it is found that metaphor aptness does not affect this choice. This result can be treated as computational evidence supporting the interpretive diversity and conventionality views.     

Categorization and metaphor understanding.

Glucksberg and Keysar (1990) have proposed a class-inclusion model of metaphor comprehension. This theory suggests that metaphors are not understood as implicit similes but are seen as class-inclusion statements in which the topic of a metaphor is assigned to a diagnostic, ad hoc category, whereas the metaphor's vehicle is a prototypical member of that category. The author claims that verbal metaphors are not simply instantiations of temporary, ad hoc categories but reflect preexisting conceptual mappings in long-term memory that are metaphorically structured. Various evidence from cognitive linguistics, philosophy, and psychology are described in support of this claim. Evidence is also presented that supports, contrary to Glucksberg and Keysar's position, the role of tacit conceptual metaphors in the comprehension of verbal metaphors in discourse.     

Context and lexical access: implications of nonword interference for lexical ambiguity resolution

To eliminate potential "backward" priming effects, Glucksberg, Kreuz, and Rho (1986) introduced a variant of the cross-modal lexical priming task in which subjects made lexical decisions to nonword targets that were modeled on a word related to either the contextually biased or unbiased sense of an ambiguous word. Lexical decisions to nonwords were longer than controls only when the nonword was related to the contextually biased sense of the ambiguous word, leading Glucksberg et al. to conclude that context does constrain lexical access and that the multiple access pattern observed in previous studies was probably an artifact of backward priming. We did not find nonword interference when the nonword targets used by Glucksberg et al. were preceded by semantically related ambiguous or unambiguous word primes. However, we did replicate their sentence context results when the ambiguous words were removed from the sentences. We conclude that the interference obtained by Glucksberg et al. is due to postlexical judgements of the congruence of the sentence context and the target, not to context constraining lexical access.     

Semantic congruity and expectancy as separate processes

In two experiments, we investigated the role of expectancy in producing congruity effects in comparative judgment. In Experiment 1, instructions to choose the larger or smaller term either preceded pairs for comparative judgment or preceded individual words for lexical decision. If expectancy in interpreting the comparative judgment terms accounts for the congruity effect, the lexical decision task also should show a congruity effect. However, there were large congruity effects in comparative judgment but not in lexical decision. In this experiment, we used an infiniteset design to make sure that semantic information was needed on comparative judgment trials. In Experiment 2, comparative judgment pairs were preceded by a prime word that either was or was not a category label for the terms in the pairs. There were both congruity and priming effects, with no interaction between the two. This result implies that expectancy and the semanticcongruity effect come from separate processes.     

Form-based priming in spoken word recognition: the roles of competition and bias.

Phonological priming of spoken words refers to improved recognition of targets preceded by primes that share at least one of their constituent phonemes (e.g., BULL-BEER). Phonetic priming refers to reduced recognition of targets preceded by primes that share no phonemes with targets but are phonetically similar to targets (e.g., BULL-VEER). Five experiments were conducted to investigate the role of bias in phonological priming. Performance was compared across conditions of phonological and phonetic priming under a variety of procedural manipulations. Ss in phonological priming conditions systematically modified their responses on unrelated priming trials in perceptual identification, and they were slower and more errorful on unrelated trials in lexical decision than were Ss in phonetic priming conditions. Phonetic and phonological priming effects display different time courses and also different interactions with changes in proportion of related priming trials. Phonological priming involves bias; phonetic priming appears to reflect basic properties of activation and competition in spoken word recognition.     

Sequential congruency effects: disentangling priming and conflict adaptation

Responding to the color of a word is slower and less accurate if the word refers to a different color (incongruent condition) than if it refers to the same color (congruent condition). This phenomenon, known as the Stroop effect, is modulated by sequential effects: it is bigger when the current trial is preceded by a congruent condition than by an incongruent one in the previous trial. Whether this phenomenon is due to priming mechanisms or to cognitive control is still debated. To disentangle the contribution of priming with respect to conflict adaptation mechanisms in determining sequential effects, two experiments were designed here with a four-alternative forced choice (4-AFC) Stroop task: in the first one only trials with complete alternations of features were used, while in the second experiment all possible types of repetitions were presented. Both response times (RTs) and errors were evaluated. Conflict adaptation effects on RTs were limited to congruent trials and were exclusively due to priming: they disappeared in the priming-free experiment and, in the second experiment, they occurred in sequences with feature repetitions but not in complete alternation sequences. Error results, instead, support the presence of conflict adaptation effects in incongruent trials. In priming-free sequences (Experiment 1 and complete alternation sequences of Experiment 2) with incongruent previous trials there was no error Stroop effect, while this effect was significant with congruent previous trials. These results indicate that cognitive control may modulate performance above and beyond priming effects.     

Evidence for role-neutral initial processing of metaphors

Two models of metaphor processing are contrasted. The structure-mapping model postulates an initially role-neutral alignment process, followed by directional projection of inferences. The attributive categorization model postulates role-specific processing throughout comprehension. To test between these models, the early stages of metaphor comprehension were probed using a technique based on S. Glucksberg, P. Gildea, and H. Bookin's (1982) finding that metaphorical meaning interferes with literal truthfulness judgments. In Experiment 1, interference effects did not differ between normal metaphors and metaphors with reversed terms, suggesting that initial processing is role-neutral. In Experiment 2, we again found no role dependence in interference effects, even for highly conventional metaphors. In Experiment 3, it was verified that (a) full comprehension is role-sensitive and (b) full comprehension reaction times (RTs) are far longer than interference RTs, buttressing the claim that interference is an early-stage effect. Overall, the results support the structure-mapping model of metaphor processing.     

Metaphors do not use associations between concepts,they are used to create them

Does the interpretability and aptness of a metaphor depend on prior existing associative relations between the metaphor topic and vehicle? Lexical decision latencies for pairs of words drawn from apt, comprehensible metaphors were no faster than latencies for randomly paired words. In contrast, lexical decision latencies for associatively related word pairs were faster than latencies for randomly paired words. These data suggest that good metaphors do not use preexisting associations to achieve their effects. Instead, we argue tht people use metaphors to create new relations between concepts. Implications for a theory of metaphor comprehension are discussed.     

对语义网络中概念非类属关系的实验研究

本研究包括三个实验。实验一在混和呈现条件下比较被试对隐喻句和类属句的加工时问,发现可理解性高的隐喻句的R_T不比类属句的慢。实验二在分组呈现条件下比较被试加工隐喻句与类属句的速度,结果与实验一基本相同。实验一、二中还发现类属概念的层次与语义加工时间没有必然联系。实验三比较了隐喻句对三类概念的启动作用,发现隐喻对自身的语义特征概念有明显的启动作用。根据三个实验的结果,我们提出了一种称为特征联结的语义网络结构模型。     

Prosody-assisted head-driven access to spoken German compounds

Auditory processing of German 2-noun compound words was investigated with 328 participants in 4 experiments by monitoring semantic priming effects of the left constituents of the compound words. The authors demonstrated that there is no primacy of the left constituents in accessing auditorily presented German compound words in the mental lexicon. A clear priming effect of left constituents occurred only for compound words with a transparent right constituent that is the head of compound words in Germanic languages. The data suggest that the access to German compounds in the auditory domain involves 2 temporally overlapping routes: direct and decompositional. The prosodic structure (i.e., the duration) of the first morphemes of compound words appears to be a determining factor for activation of the decompositional route.     

Antecedent Priming at Trace Positions in Children’s Sentence Processing

The present study examines whether children reactivate a moved constituent at its gap position and how children’s more limited working memory span affects the way they process filler-gap dependencies. 46 5–7 year-old children and 54 adult controls participated in a cross-modal picture priming experiment and underwent a standardized working memory test. The results revealed a statistically significant interaction between the participants’ working memory span and antecedent reactivation: High-span children (n = 19) and high-span adults (n = 22) showed evidence of antecedent priming at the gap site, while for low-span children and adults, there was no such effect. The antecedent priming effect in the high-span participants indicates that in both children and adults, dislocated arguments access their antecedents at gap positions. The absence of an antecedent reactivation effect in the low-span participants could mean that these participants required more time to integrate the dislocated constituent and reactivated the filler later during the sentence.     

死亡启动影响自我参照记忆的年龄差异

以往研究表明对死亡不可避免性的认识使人类产生死亡焦虑,并且为了降低该焦虑,年轻人倾向于抑制生理自我加工;然而相比年轻人,老年人对死亡的接受程度更高,并且自我抑制能力减弱。因此本研究采用死亡启动范式,探讨了死亡对自我相关记忆的影响以及可能存在的年龄差异。实验一以大学生为被试,结果发现死亡启动后,个体对自我相关信息的再认率显著低于消极启动后;实验二以老年人为被试,结果发现死亡启动后,个体对自我相关信息的再认率与消极启动后无差异。上述结果说明,死亡启动对自我相关记忆的影响存在年龄差异。在大学生中,死亡启动使个体抑制自我相关信息,而在老年人中该抑制效应并不存在。     

Adult-child discourse: Developmental interaction between information processing and linguistic knowledge

In the present study, the discourse interaction between adult and child was examined in terms of the content of their utterances, and the linguistic and contextual relations between their messages, in order to investigate how children use the information from adults' input sentences to form contingent responses. The analyses described were based on longitudinal data from four children from approximately 21 to 36 months of age. Categories of child discourse, their development and their interactions with aspects of prior adult utterances form the major results of the study. Child utterances were identified as adjacent (immediately preceded by an adult utterance), or as nonadjacent (not immediately preceded by an adult utterance). Adjacent utterances were either contingent (shared the same topic and added new information relative to the topic of the prior utterance), imitative (shared the same topic but did not add new information), or noncontingent (did not share the same topic). From the beginning, the adjacent speech was greater than nonadjacent speech. Contingent speech increased over time; in particular, linguistically contingent speech (speech that expanded the verb relation of the prior adult utterance with added or replaced constituents within a clause) showed the greatest developmental increase. Linguistically contingent speech occurred more often after questions than nonquestions. The results are discussed in terms of how the differential requirements for processing information in antecedent messages is related to language learning.     

Priming of emotion recognition

Four experiments investigated priming of emotion recognition using a range of emotional stimuli, including facial expressions, words, pictures, and nonverbal sounds. In each experiment, a prime-target paradigm was used with related, neutral, and unrelated pairs. In Experiment 1, facial expression primes preceded word targets in an emotion classification task. A pattern of priming of emotional word targets by related primes with no inhibition of unrelated primes was found. Experiment 2 reversed these primes and targets and found the same pattern of results, demonstrating bidirectional priming between facial expressions and words. Experiment 2 also found priming of facial expression targets by picture primes. Experiment 3 demonstrated that priming occurs not just between pairs of stimuli that have a high co-occurrence in the environment (for example, nonverbal sounds and facial expressions), but with stimuli that co-occur less frequently and are linked mainly by their emotional category (for example, nonverbal sounds and printed words). This shows the importance of the prime and target sharing a common emotional category, rather than their previous co-occurrence. Experiment 4 extended the findings by showing that there are category-based effects as well as valence effects in emotional priming, supporting a categorical view of emotion recognition.     

Recognition by association: Within‐ and cross‐modality associative priming with faces and voices

Recent literature has raised the suggestion that voice recognition runs in parallel to face recognition. As a result, a prediction can be made that voices should prime faces and faces should prime voices. A traditional associative priming paradigm was used in two studies to explore within‐modality priming and cross‐modality priming. In the within‐modality condition where both prime and target were faces, analysis indicated the expected associative priming effect: The familiarity decision to the second target celebrity was made more quickly if preceded by a semantically related prime celebrity, than if preceded by an unrelated prime celebrity. In the cross‐modality condition, where a voice prime preceded a face target, analysis indicated no associative priming when a 3‐s stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used. However, when a relatively longer SOA was used, providing time for robust recognition of the prime, significant cross‐modality priming emerged. These data are explored within the context of a unified account of face and voice recognition, which recognizes weaker voice processing than face processing.