The influence of verbal and imagery strategies on processing figurative language

Four experiments on metaphor functions were designed to test a functionally orientated problem-solving approach, where act, content, and experience are treated as three aspects of cognition. Two experiments showed imagery strategies to be superior to verbal strategies as regards comprehension and production of metaphors. However, the results of the two other experiments showed no differences between imagery and verbal strategies.
Metaphor performance was uncorrelated with performance on general intelligence tests. The intercorrelations between different metaphor tasks were also generally low. The highest positive correlation was found with a measure of imagery control under imagery processing conditions. Aptness ratings of metaphors were unrelated to level of metaphor memory. However, comprehension of metaphors was observed to correlate positively with metaphor memory.
The results show that attitude factors are important for comprehension and production of metaphors, and that alternative memorization strategies may work equally well. In order to explain the observations a multi-level coding model was suggested.