Misunderstanding metaphor: What's the problem?

In order to investigate the potential difficulties posed by task demands and by surface features of metaphorical sentences, children aged 6, 7, and 9 years were presented with metaphorical grounds encoded in five alternative linguistic forms: predicative metaphors, topicless metaphors, similes, analogies, and riddles. The task demands posed by comprehension of predicative metaphors proved greater than those posed by topicless metaphors, suggesting that it is more difficult to specify the similarity between two given terms than it is to generate a missing term. When topicless metaphors were rewritten either in an explicit analogic form or in the form of a riddle, comprehension was increased; however, when predicative metaphors were rewritten as similies, the addition of the term “like” to make clear the similarity relationship between the two terms failed to elevate understanding.     

A test of the Sophisticated Guessing Theory of word perception

Under difficult viewing conditions, a letter in a familiar word can be perceived more accurately than the same letter alone or in a string of unrelated letters. Sophisticated Guessing Theory asserts that perception is more accurate when a letter appears in a word because its identity is constrained by the identity of neighboring context letters. Experiment 1 tested the following prediction: A letter in a word should be perceived more accurately in strongly constraining word contexts than in weakly constraining word contexts. No such trend was found using a number of different measures of contextual constraint and perceptual accuracy. Experiment 2 verified that, with the same conditions used in Experiment 1 to test Sophisticated Guessing Theory, a strong perceptual advantage could be obtained for letters in words vs. letters alone or in unrelated-letter strings. Several alternative theories of word perception are discussed. The most attractive asserts that for words an additional higher-level perceptual code is formed that is more resistant to degradation than the code formed for letters.     

How shall we study individual differences in cognitive abilities?—Methodological and theoretical perspectives

Selected studies in recent research literature are examined with regard to (a) their methodological adequacy in establishing dimensions of individual differences in information-processing abilities, and (b) the theoretical problems involved in inferring psychological processes from individual difference dimensions. Many methodological inadequacies are noted, including use of small Ns, questionable procedures in establishing variables (e.g., use of raw difference scores), improper or inadequate use of factor analysis and other multivariate statistical techniques, and poor presentation of results. On the whole, little progress has been made thus far in identifying psychological processes through research in individual differences, even though this research approach is viable and potentially useful. Serious theoretical difficulties arise in attempting to infer the nature and operation of psychological processes merely from the identification of individual difference trait dimensions. Promising research, however, is represented by studies in which an effort is made to analyze tasks into their components, to vary task characteristics, and/or to consider the strategies that individuals can employ in performing the tasks.