Familiarity with Proverbs and Performance of a Black Population on Gorham's Proverbs Test

Abstract

The Gorham Proverbs Test was administered to 278 black participants residing in a large metropolitan area in Southern California. Respondents were also asked to indicate whether they were familiar with each of the 40 proverbs in the test. Scores were significantly affected by respondents' ages, education, and perceived childhood socioeconomic status. Familiarity with a proverb increased the probability of its correct interpretation. Familiarity of proverbs and attempts to interpret them were significantly associated, that is, respondents tended not to attempt interpretation of unfamiliar proverbs. The number of familiar proverbs per test was not significantly associated with respondents' test scores. The mean Abstract score obtained in this study was comparable to mean scores previously reported in the literature, suggesting that ethnic differences do not significantly affect performance on the Proverbs Test.

Factors Affecting Saudi Female Efl Students' Interpretation of Proverbs At Ar-Rass Girls Collge of Arts and Sciences

“…These results were consistent with the findings of Cunningham, Ridley, and Campbell (1987) and Penn, Jacob, and Brown (1988), who examined the role of familiarity in proverb comprehension in adulthood. Obviously, these studies demonstrate that familiarity is an important factor in proverb comprehension for native-speakers of wide age-range.…”

Nonliteral Language in Alzheimer Dementia: A Review

“…Instead, normative data were used (Delis et al, 1984). This point is of relevance as marked inter-individual differences exist in people's familiarity with individual proverbs (Haynes, Resnick, Dougherty, & Althof, 1993;Penn et al, 1988;Van Lancker, 1990). As well, the number of applied stimuli (five in each condition) is low in the study by Chapman.…”

“…It is now clear that comprehensibleness of proverbs interdepends with their familiarity (Nippold & Haq, 1996) that is, whether the subject ''knows'' the proverb or not (Uekermann, Thoma, & Daum, 2008). Research in healthy subjects and patients indicates that familiar proverbs are easier to interpret (Penn, Jacob, & Brown, 1988). One explanation given in the literature is that successful recognition of familiar nonliteral expressions likewise involves perception of an ''overall pattern'' (Gibbs, 1980;Horowitz & Manelis, 1973;Lieberman, 1963;Osgood & Housain, 1974), whereas, in contrast, comprehension of proverbs that are novel to the subject can require extensive semantic association processes and referring to general world knowledge.…”

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“…Proverb interpretation has been described as a general neuropsychological measure (Van Lancker, 1990), although a recent study found greater impairment in frontotemporal dementia than in Alzheimer's disease (Moretti et al, 2001). Proverb interpretation is also influenced by a number of extraneous factors, such as familiarity, socioeconomic status, education, and reading proficiency (Nippold et al, 2001;Penn et al, 1988). It is not clear whether proverb interpretation is as useful for assessing executive functions as fable interpretation, a task suggested by Luria (1966).…”