Flute birds and creamy skies: The metaphor interference effect in modifier–noun phrases.

Abstract

People take longer to determine that metaphoric sentences (e.g., some birds are flutes) are literally false compared to anomalous sentences (e.g., some birds are pickles). This metaphor interference effect (MIE) shows that metaphorical interpretations are automatically computed even in contexts and tasks that only require literal interpretations. Although a well-replicated finding, the MIE has only been investigated in sentence stimuli in which the metaphoric composition is explicitly stated (such that birds are asserted to be flutes). This raises questions about the generalizability of the MIE because (a) A is B metaphors are rare in discourse and (b) other metaphor variants, such as flute bird, are unspecified in their metaphoric composition (i.e., do not specifically assert which concept, if any, is metaphorical). In this experiment, we investigated whether metaphoric modifier-noun phrases such as flute bird and creamy sky produce a MIE. In addition, we explored if word-level semantic variables (semantic neighborhood density and concreteness) play a role in the MIE. We asked participants to determine if modifier-noun phrases refer to things that literally exist or not. We found a MIE in which metaphoric phrases (e.g., flute bird, creamy sky) took longer to judge as literally false relative to scrambled counterparts (e.g., flute sky, creamy bird). Moreover, we found that word-level semantic variables affect the magnitude of the MIE only for adjective-noun phrases. Therefore, metaphoric meaning can be automatically extracted from metaphoric compounds, suggesting that the MIE is more robust than previously demonstrated. Public Significance StatementThis study demonstrates that people can automatically grasp metaphoric meaning from two-word phrases such as shark lawyer or silky sunset, even without a figurative context. Moreover, people are initially more perceptive to the nuances of adjective-noun metaphors (e.g., silky sunset) than nounnoun metaphors (e.g., shark lawyer). These findings have implications for communication because people encounter metaphor in daily life.

On choosing the vehicles of metaphors 2.0: the interactive effects of semantic neighborhood density and body-object interaction on metaphor production

“…Moreover, irrelevant semantic properties, of which semantically richer concepts will have more of, must be inhibited during processing ( Kintsch, 2000 ). Subsequent studied have reported similar findings in both offline and online tasks, and in special populations ( Al-Azary et al, 2019 , 2021 ). The present study extends findings of semantic richness to body-object interaction, and to metaphor production (rather than sole comprehension).…”

“…Words were chosen from the lowest concreteness quartile and therefore are the most abstract. Semantic neighborhood density was derived from the WINDSORS database ( Durda and Buchanan, 2008 ), a global co-occurrence model used in previous metaphor processing research ( Al-Azary and Buchanan, 2017 ; Al-Azary et al, 2021 ), and was defined as the average semantic distance between a word and its neighbors within 3.5 standard deviations away. A median split value was used to categorize words as either high or low-SND.…”

“…In addition, to body-object interaction, we also considered semantic neighborhood density (SND), which is a measure of the average similarity between a word and its nearest associations ( Buchanan et al, 2001 ). Semantic neighborhood density has been demonstrated to affect metaphor comprehension in a variety of online and offline processing tasks ( Al-Azary and Buchanan, 2017 ; Al-Azary et al, 2019 , 2021 ). In sum, the aforementioned studies on SND and metaphor comprehension demonstrate that words from sparser, rather than denser, semantic neighborhoods, result in more comprehensible metaphors.…”

Predicting impactful dreams: The contributions of absence-related melancholy and absence-related depression.

“…The level of metacognition suggested by dual perspectives may enable the dreamer to "sense" the semantic "resonance" between such neighboring representations (e.g., butcher/surgeon, car/bike, flute/bird). And, attunement to resonant representations may initiate their metaphoric construal (Al-Azary et al, 2021) even without the (copular) syntactic structure that links the topic and vehicle of nominal metaphors (e.g., my surgeon "is" a butcher). This possibility is compatible with evidence that awakening from nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams is accompanied by an increased readiness to endorse neighboring representations as belonging to the same category (Study 2; Kuiken et al, 2018).…”

The psychology of saying what you don’t mean: Celebrating the research career of Professor Albert Katz.

“…The next three papers address the comprehension processes at play for metaphorical language, which shares many features with idiomatic language to the extent that metaphors are highly familiar or frequent. Al-Azary et al (2021) investigate whether past findings for metaphorical expressions extend to two-word phrases for the classic metaphor-interference-effect task. Their results suggest that metaphorical understanding can indeed occur for two-word phrases, even ones that are relatively novel depending on the particular words involved.…”