Familiarity and Aptness in Metaphor Comprehension

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• The career of metaphor hypothesis posits that novel metaphors are understood via feature comparison, becoming direct category recognition with familiarity.
• The categorization hypothesis suggests apt metaphors are always understood via categorization, with literal comparison only for poor metaphors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of familiarity and aptness in metaphor comprehension.
• To test predictions from both the career of metaphor and categorization hypotheses.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Compared comprehension times for high- and low-familiarity metaphors with equated aptness.
• Experiment 2a: Assessed the effect of literal priming on low-familiarity metaphor interpretation.
• Experiment 2b: Compared comprehension for high- and low-aptness metaphors with equated familiarity.

Main Results:

• High familiarity significantly speeded metaphor comprehension compared to low familiarity (Experiment 1).
• Literal priming did not facilitate low-familiarity metaphor interpretation, contradicting the career of metaphor hypothesis (Experiment 2a).
• Metaphor aptness did not affect comprehension when familiarity was equated, contradicting the categorization hypothesis (Experiment 2b).

Conclusions:

• Metaphor familiarity, not solely categorization, plays a crucial role in comprehension speed.
• Existing theories may need revision to fully account for the interplay of familiarity and aptness in processing metaphors.