Stimulus design is an obstacle course: 560 matched literal and metaphorical sentences for testing neural hypotheses about metaphor

Despite the ubiquity and importance of metaphor in thought and communication, its neural mediation remains elusive. We suggest that this uncertainty reflects, in part, stimuli that have not been designed with recent conceptual frameworks in mind or that have been hampered by inadvertent differences between metaphoric and literal conditions. In this article, we begin addressing these shortcomings by developing a large, flexible, extensively normed, and theoretically motivated set of metaphoric and literal sentences. On the basis of the results of three norming studies, we provide 280 pairs of closely matched metaphoric and literal sentences that are characterized along 10 dimensions: length, frequency, concreteness, familiarity, naturalness, imageability, figurativeness, interpretability, valence, and valence judgment reaction time. In addition to allowing for control of these potentially confounding lexical and sentential factors, these stimuli are designed to address questions about the role of novelty, metaphor type, and sensory-motor grounding in determining the neural basis of metaphor comprehension. Supplemental data for this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.     

Response to Pashler et al. (2016)

Pashler, Rohrer, Abramson, Wolfson, and Harris (2016/this issue) in their critique of Chatterjee, Rose, and Sinha (2013 Chatterjee, P., Rose, R., &; Sinha, J. (2013). Why money meanings matter in decisions to donate time and money. Marketing Letters, 24, 109–118. doi:10.1007/s11002-012-9215-0[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) data argue that (a) large effect sizes in Study 1 and Study 2 undermine the credibility of the data; (b) in a lexical task that is part of Study 3, a concentration of participants in (5,0) and (0,5) benefit/cost word data points and the similarity of 9 neutral word responses at these points are extremely unlikely; and (c) there are apparent errors in the execution of Study 3. In this response, I examine these issues in detail. A recent review of money prime literature (Vohs, 2015 Vohs, K. (2015). Money priming can change people’s thoughts, feelings, motivations, and behaviors: An update on 10 years of experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(4), e86–e93. doi:10.1037/xge0000091[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) notes many effect sizes that are as big as or bigger than ours. Although 8 coding errors were discovered in Study 3 data and this particular study has been retracted from that article, as I show in this article, the arguments being put forth by the critics are untenable. For instance, my analysis shows that results hold even without the concentration of (5,0) and (0,5) participants, and I offer statistical simulations to counter critics’ arguments. Regarding the apparent errors in Study 3, I find that removing the target word stems SUPP and CE do not influence findings in any way. I also report findings from MacDonnell and White (2015 MacDonnell, R., &; White, K. (2015). How construals of money versus time impact consumer charitable giving. Journal of Consumer Research, 42, 551–563. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucv042[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), who replicate the basic finding of Chatterjee et al. in a different context.     

Comprehensive analysis of golf performance on the PGA Tour: 1990-2004

Researchers have investigated the relationship between different shot-making measures and performance on the PGA Tour. Prior studies have typically focused on a short period of time or used a restricted sample so long-term trends were not discernible. To remedy this situation, the present study looked at the longitudinal performance of professional golfers from 1990-2004. The findings indicated a remarkable stability in terms of the relative importance of Greens In Regulation and Putting Average in explaining the variability in Scoring Average. The findings also indicated a declining importance of driving in recent years due, in part, to a strengthening of the negative relationship between Driving Distance and Driving Accuracy.     

Variance estimation in factor analysis: An application of the bootstrap

Sampling variability of the estimates of factor loadings is neglected in modern factor analysis. Such investigations are generally normal theory based and asymptotic in nature. The bootstrap, a computer-based methodology, is described and then applied to demonstrate how the sampling variability of the estimates of factor loadings can be estimated for a given set of data. The issue of the number of factors to be retained in a factor model is also addressed. The bootstrap is shown to be an effective data-analytic tool for computing various statistics of interest which are otherwise intractable.     

Development of Bengali Audio–Visual Test Battery for Assessment of Pragmatic Skills: Preliminary Normative Data Based on Educational Level

Pragmatic competence may be disrupted due to psychological and neurological causes. For appropriate remedy and rehabilitation, a precise assessment of pragmatic skills is important. However, there is no test battery in the Bengali language, and consequently, there is no published data on pragmatic ability of Bengali speakers. Due to the vast diversity of the population, it becomes increasingly difficult to assess pragmatic ability of an individual without a proper knowledge of the normal variations. To address this problem we have developed a test battery in Bengali, and to begin with, we have administered it to one hundred and five (105) normal healthy persons having different levels of education. The four groups having 17 years and above, 15 to < 17 years, 12 to < 15 years and 10 to < 12 years of education yielded a normative score of 193, 189, 171 and 150, respectively. These normative scores will allow clinicians to make a proper assessment of patients suffering from pragmatic deficits and help avoid interpreting social differences as neurological deficits.     

Prescribed spatial prepositions influence how we think about time

Prepositions combine with nouns flexibly when describing concrete locative relations (e.g. at/on/in the school) but are rigidly prescribed when paired with abstract concepts (e.g. at risk; on Wednesday; in trouble). In the former case they do linguistic work based on their discrete semantic qualities, and in the latter they appear to serve a primarily grammatical function. We used the abstract concept of time as a test case to see if specific grammatically prescribed prepositions retain semantic content. Using ambiguous questions designed to interrogate one’s meaningful representation of temporal relations, we found that the semantics of prescribed prepositions modulate how we think about time. Although prescribed preposition use is unlikely to be based on a core representational organization shared between space and time, results demonstrate that the semantics of particular locative prepositions do constrain how we think about paired temporal concepts.     

Guiding others for their own good: Action orientation is associated with prosocial enactment of the implicit power motive

Prior research has repeatedly documented how people who are implicitly motivated by power motives may hurt other people’s interests. However, people may also enact the implicit power motive (nPower) in a prosocial manner. Using an Operant Motive Test, the authors differentiated five enactment strategies within nPower and investigated personality antecedents and personal benefits of a prosocial enactment strategy. Two studies found that demand-related action orientation (i.e., ability to self-regulate positive affect) was associated with prosocial enactment of nPower. Furthermore, prosocial enactment of nPower was associated with a higher explicit power motive among future teachers (Study 1) and future psychologists (Study 2). Finally, there was an indirect effect of action orientation through the prosocial enactment of nPower on the explicit power motive (Studies 1 and 2) and, in turn, on well-being (Study 2). Our integration of motivation and self-regulation research (the “what” and “how” of goal striving) helps to better understand the dual nature of power motives.