The Impact of Subschemata on Metaphorical Processing

Baldwin, R. Scott; Luce, Terrence S.; Readence, John E.

doi:10.2307/747569

Cited by 16 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…These qualitative interview results support the experimental findings that knowledge of salient attributes of terms being compared is important (e.g., Baldwin et al, 1982). The results of this study also support, at least partially, the idea that salience imbalance is an enhancing condition for the correct nonliteral interpretation of passages as well as isolated expressions.…”

Section: Discussion Of Interview Questions the Logical Analysis Dispsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…For example, the importance of such specific attribute knowledge to the interpretation of metaphors was established by Readence, Baldwin, & Rickelman (1983); and knowledge of specific attributes of topic and vehicle terms has been discussed as an activation of relevant subschemata which indicate a depth of vocabulary knowledge necessary in interpreting metaphors and similes by Baldwin, Luce, & Readence (1982). This vocabulary knowledge could be considered unique to the comprehension of figurative language inasmuch as it is a process which operates only when attributes of literally incompatible items must be matched.…”

Section: The Results Of the Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does Figurative Language Present a Unique Comprehension Problem?

O’Brien¹,

Martin

1988

Journal of Reading Behavior

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In order to investigate whether or not the interpretation of figurative passages presented a comprehension problem unique to that of any difficult text, 50 undergraduate education majors were asked to read and interpret a nonliteral comparison passage and two researcher-constructed figurative passages. Subjects took pretests to measure their general vocabulary knowledge and inferencing ability. Performance on these measures was compared with abilities considered unique to the comprehension of figurative expressions. A set of quantitative analyses indicated that the figurative-unique abilities could not definitively account for the interpretation of both figurative passages. However, an additional qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with 10 of the subjects indicated that figurative unique abilities identified in previous research with isolated figurative expressions were operating during the interpretation of the figurative passages used in this study. The study illustrates the benefit of combining quantitative and qualitative methods to answer basic research questions about text comprehension.The comprehension of figurative language is a complex metalinguistic and cognitive ability (Friedman 1972;Ortony, 1980). Although figurative expression has interested philosophers, linguists, educators, literary theorists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists for some time, and has been used by some authors to create the essence of their writing style, relatively little is known about how figurative expressions promote humor or convey imagery (Bartel, 1983;Murray, 1972) or why readers know to approach such expressions as contextual anomalies rather than interpreting them at face value (Ortony, 1984). In short, although the expressions occur frequently in oral and written language, we are not sure how they are under- 64Journal of Reading Behavior stood. Ortony has contended that for adults, comprehension of figurative language is typically an automatic process which occasionally fails. These failures may be due to an inability to see distinctions between what is said and what is intended or to factors which are common to comprehending any difficult text. In this study, the careful examination of how adult language users approach difficult figurative passages was a vehicle for isolating some factors unique to figurative expression. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to compare factors that can account for comprehension of any difficult text with some factors that have been identified as important to the comprehension of figurative language, in an attempt to identify whether figurative language presents a unique comprehension problem.There are a number of theoretical positions on how metaphors are understood, including Aristotle's comparison theory (see McKeon, 1947);Black's (1962) Richards's (1936) philosophical work provides a mechanism for explaining the theoretical positions, his perspective will be clarified before the individual theories are explained. The expression below can be used to clar...

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Section: Discussion Of Interview Questions the Logical Analysis Dispsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: The Results Of the Statistical Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Figurative Language Present a Unique Comprehension Problem?

O’Brien¹,

Martin

1988

Journal of Reading Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Together, two raters judged an interpretation to be correct if it was a paraphrase of the standard interpretation given by a group of 56 graduate students at the University of Tulsa (Baldwin et al, 1982).…”

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instruction was given orally to the entire group, and an overhead projector was used to illustrate how to process metaphors. All sentences used in the process instruction were derived from Baldwin et al (1982). The process instruction was based on current metaphor theory but did not include teaching the concept of salience imbalance because we anticipated that this would be confusing for thirdgrade students.…”

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To test the hypothesis that knowledge of the matching attribute is a precondition to the interpretation of metaphors, Baldwin, Luce, and Readence (1982) asked fifth-and sixth-grade subjects (a) to interpret simple similes and metaphors, for example, sentence (3) below and, in a separate task, (b) to list attributes of the vehicles in the stimulus sentences, for example, cheetah.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Direct Instruction in Processing Metaphors

Readence

Baldwin

Head

1986

Journal of Reading Behavior

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Two experiments were conducted to explore the efficacy of instruction with third-grade subjects in processing metaphors based on the principles of the direct explicit teaching of reading comprehension and current metaphor theory. In Experiment 1, process instruction was validated. In Experiment 2, process instruction was compared to traditional basal instruction in the context of a unit on metaphor. Statistically significant differences were found in favor of process instruction. The psychological processes involved in metaphorical interpretation are discussed and directions for future research suggested.Metaphor has long been the subject of speculation and research in disciplines as diverse as philosophy, linguistics, literature, and cognitive psychology. The purpose of the present study was to clarify the relationship between the theory and practice of metaphor by employing the tenets of one theory of metaphor, the salience imbalance hypothesis (Ortony, Vondruska, Foss, & Jones, 1985), and the principles underlying the direct explicit teaching of reading comprehension (e.g., Pearson, 1984; Roehler, Duffy, & Meloth, in press) to see if young children could actually be taught to interpret metaphors.According to Ortony et al. (1985), a metaphor is a statement of nonliteral similarity wherein two terms of a disparate nature are compared, that is, the terms are not really alike. What the terms do have in common is some shared attribute(s). For example, in sentence (1) below, television is being compared to cyclops. These two things are not really alike, but they do share two attributes: monstrousness and 325

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Comprehension and Generation of Metaphoric Language in Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Dyslexia

Kasirer

Mashal

2016

Dyslexia

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Difficulties with figurative language comprehension were documented in adult dyslexia (DYS). In the present research, we investigated the comprehension and generation of metaphors in 37 children, 35 adolescents, and 34 adults with and without DYS. We also tested the contribution of executive function to metaphor processing. A multiple-choice questionnaire with conventional and novel metaphors was used to assess comprehension; a concept-explanation task was used to test conventional and novel metaphor generation (verbal creativity). The findings indicated differences between the dyslexic children and the control group in conventional metaphor comprehension. However, both groups performed similarly in the novel metaphor comprehension test. Furthermore, although children and adolescents with DYS showed similar performance in metaphor generation as their typically developing peers, adults with DYS generated more metaphors than controls. While scores on tests of verbal knowledge and mental flexibility contributed to the prediction of conventional metaphor comprehension, scores on non-verbal tests and mental flexibility contributed to the prediction of novel metaphor generation. Our findings suggest that individuals with DYS are not impaired in novel metaphor comprehension and metaphor generation and that metaphor comprehension and generation utilize different cognitive resources. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The Impact of Subschemata on Metaphorical Processing

Cited by 16 publications

References 11 publications

Does Figurative Language Present a Unique Comprehension Problem?

Does Figurative Language Present a Unique Comprehension Problem?

Direct Instruction in Processing Metaphors

Comprehension and Generation of Metaphoric Language in Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Dyslexia

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