Semantic processing of metaphor: A case-study of deep dyslexia

Al-Azary, Hamad; McAuley, Tara; Katz, Albert N.

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.04.003

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Adjective–noun metaphors were responded to more quickly when both the modifier and head SND levels were higher, resulting in less of a MIE for such items. We interpret this finding to be consistent with recent proposals that semantic richness is detrimental for metaphor comprehension (Al-Azary & Buchanan, 2017; Al-Azary et al, 2019). Accordingly, dense semantic neighborhoods contain many semantic properties that do not cohere in computing a metaphoric meaning, and as such, make the metaphor less comprehensible, resulting in less metaphor interference.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Additionally, for AN metaphors modifier-SND interacted with head-concreteness such that, metaphors were responded to more quickly when the modifier-SND and head-concreteness were both higher, indicating less of a MIE, a finding which also aligns with detrimental effects of semantic richness (Al-Azary & Buchanan, 2017;Al-Azary et al, 2019). That is, when modifier-SND is high, a more concrete head may contain too many irrelevant imageable features, resulting in a failure to coherently integrate the two semantically rich representations (Al-Azary & Buchanan, 2017), resulting in a more rapid rejection of the metaphor.…”

Section: Flute Birds and Creamy Skiesmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…However, since a MIE was obtained for NN items, it is likely that semantic representations were processed more generally, but not finely enough to access fine-grain characteristics such as density. Moreover, SND has been found to influence nominal metaphor comprehension (e.g., Noun 1 is Noun 2) in tasks characterized by later time courses than the MIE (Al-Azary & Buchanan, 2017;Al-Azary et al, 2019;Katz & Al-Azary, 2017). Therefore, one may expect for fine-grain semantic effects to also play a role in NN phrases in other, more downstream, tasks.…”

Section: Flute Birds and Creamy Skiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Al-Azary¹,

Gagné²,

Spalding³

2021

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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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.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Flute Birds and Creamy Skiesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Flute Birds and Creamy Skiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

Al-Azary¹,

Gagné²,

Spalding³

2021

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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“…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. The present study extends findings of semantic richness to body-object interaction, and to metaphor production (rather than sole comprehension).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

“…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.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Al-Azary,

Katz

2023

Front. Psychol.

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In a metaphor, such as language is a bridge, two distinct concepts known as the topic (i.e., language) and vehicle (i.e., bridge) are juxtaposed to produce figurative meaning. Previous work demonstrated that, when creating metaphors, participants choose vehicles that are concrete, rather than abstract, and are also a moderate semantic distance away from the topic. However, little is known about the semantic representations underlying metaphor production beyond topic-vehicle semantic distance and vehicle concreteness. Here, we studied the role of two semantic richness variables in metaphor production – semantic neighborhood density (SND), which measures the proximity of a word and its associations in semantic space, and body-object interaction (BOI), which reflects the ease with which a human body can motorically interact with a word’s referent. In each trial, participants were presented with an abstract topic, such as miracle, and were instructed to make an apt and comprehensible metaphor by choosing a vehicle word (e.g., lighthouse). All of the topics were abstract but half were high-SND (from dense semantic neighborhoods) and half were low-SND (from sparse semantic neighborhoods). Similarly, half of the potential vehicle words were either high or low in SND and also differed on BOI such that half were high-BOI (e.g., bicycle), whereas half were low-BOI (e.g., rainbow). We observed a three-way interaction such that participants selected low-BOI, rather than high-BOI, vehicle words when topics or vehicles were high-SND. We interpret this finding to suggest that participants attempt to reduce the overall semantic richness of their created metaphors.

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