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Related Experiment Video

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The Adventures of Fundi Intervention Based on the Cognitive and Emotional Processing in Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder Patients

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Published on: June 12, 2020

The interplay between inhibitory control and metaphor conventionality.

Faria Sana^1,2, Juana Park³, Christina L Gagné³

¹Centre for Psychology, Athabasca University, Edmonton, AB, Canada. fsana@athabascau.ca.

Memory & Cognition

|February 22, 2021

Summary

Understanding novel metaphors requires strong inhibitory control to suppress literal meanings. As metaphors become conventional, this cognitive control lessens, facilitating comprehension.

Keywords:

Executive functions Inhibitory control Metaphor conventionality

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Linguistics

Background:

Metaphor comprehension involves activating and selecting figurative meanings, often requiring inhibition of literal interpretations.
Metaphor conventionality influences processing ease, with novel metaphors demanding more cognitive resources than familiar ones.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of metaphor conventionality and inhibitory control in metaphor comprehension.
To determine how individual differences in inhibitory control affect the processing of novel versus conventional metaphors.

Main Methods:

Participants completed a sense-nonsense task to evaluate phrase sensibility.
Experiment 1 included an inhibitory control task to assess response inhibition.
Experiment 2 employed a dual-task paradigm to manipulate inhibitory control load.

Main Results:

Lower inhibitory control was associated with slower processing of novel metaphors and faster processing of conventional metaphors.
Under high inhibitory load, participants showed better performance on conventional metaphors compared to novel ones.
Findings indicate that inhibitory control is crucial for comprehending less conventional metaphors.

Conclusions:

Inhibitory control is a key cognitive mechanism supporting metaphor comprehension, particularly for novel expressions.
The cognitive effort required for metaphor processing decreases as metaphors become more conventional and less reliant on inhibitory control.