Novel metaphor comprehension: Semantic neighbourhood density interacts with concreteness

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

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.

Semantic Memory and Creativity: The Costs and Benefits of Semantic Memory Structure in Generating Original Ideas

Despite its theoretical importance, little is known about how semantic memory structure facilitates and constrains creative idea production. We examine whether the semantic richness of a concept has both benefits and costs to creative idea production. Specifically, we tested whether cue set-size-an index of semantic richness reflecting the average number of elements associated with a given concept-impacts the quantity (fluency) and quality (originality) of responses generated during the alternate uses task (AUT). Across four studies, we show that low-association, sparse, AUT cues benefit originality at the cost of fluency compared to high-association, rich, AUT cues. Furthermore, we found an interaction with individual differences in fluid intelligence in the low-association AUT cues, suggesting that constraints of sparse semantic knowledge can be overcome with top-down intervention. The findings indicate that semantic richness differentially impacts the quality and quantity of generated ideas, and that cognitive control processes can facilitate idea production when conceptual knowledge is limited.

Difficulty and pleasure in the comprehension of verb-based metaphor sentences: A behavioral study

What is difficult is not usually pleasurable. Yet, for certain unfamiliar figurative language, like that which is common in poetry, while comprehension is often more difficult than for more conventional language, it is in many cases more pleasurable. Concentrating our investigation on verb-based metaphors, we examined whether and to what degree the novel variations (in the form of verb changes and extensions) of conventional verb metaphors were both more difficult to comprehend and yet induced more pleasure. To test this relationship, we developed a set of 62 familiar metaphor stimuli, each with corresponding optimal and excessive verb variation and metaphor extension conditions, and normed these stimuli using both objective measures and participant subjective ratings. We then tested the pleasure-difficulty relationship with an online behavioral study. Based on Rachel Giora and her colleagues’ ‘optimal innovation hypothesis’, we anticipated an inverse U-shaped relationship between ease and pleasure, with an optimal degree of difficulty, introduced by metaphor variations, producing the highest degree of pleasure when compared to familiar or excessive conditions. Results, however, revealed a more complex picture, with only metaphor extension conditions (not verb variation conditions) producing the anticipated pleasure effects. Individual differences in semantic cognition and verbal reasoning assessed using the Semantic Similarities Test, while clearly influential, further complicated the pleasure-difficulty relationship, suggesting an important avenue for further investigation.

The critical role of interference control in metaphor comprehension evidenced by the drift-diffusion model

We address the question of, among several executive functions, which one has a strong influence on metaphor comprehension. To this end, participants took part in a metaphor comprehension task where metaphors had varying levels of familiarity (familiar vs. novel metaphors) with different conditions of context (supporting vs. opposing contexts). We scrutinized each participant's detailed executive functions using seven neuropsychological tests. More interestingly, we modelled their responses in metaphor comprehension using the drift-diffusion model, in an attempt to provide more systematic accounts of the processes underlying metaphor comprehension. Results showed that there were significant negative correlations between response times in metaphor comprehension and scores of the Controlled Oral Word Association Test (COWAT)-Semantic, suggesting that better performances in comprehending metaphors were strongly associated with better interference control. Using the drift-diffusion model, we found that the familiarity, compared to context, had greater leverage in the decision process for metaphor comprehension. Moreover, individuals with better performance in the COWAT-Semantic test demonstrated higher drift rates. In conclusion, with more fine-grained analysis of the decisions involved in metaphor comprehension using the drift-diffusion model, we argue that interference control plays an important role in processing metaphors.

The RK processor: A program for analysing metaphor and word feature-listing data

Feature-listing tasks are an invaluable resource for exploring how words, categories, and metaphors are represented. However, manually coding the generated features is time-consuming and expensive, and involves subjective judgments from the experimenter. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the "RK processor", a program that was developed in our lab to analyse metaphor feature data but which can also be applied to other feature-listing data. After detailing the steps of processing, we demonstrate that the processed feature data align with previous findings in which metaphor features were processed manually and that the processed features predict dimensions of metaphor judgments pertaining to comprehensibility and metaphor goodness. Lastly, we present several other applications for research on word similarity, compound words, categories and concepts, semantic ambiguity, incongruity resolution and computational modelling. The RK processor offers researchers a valuable tool to save time and resources and to maintain consistency in processing.

Evaluating the predication model of metaphor comprehension: Using word2vec to model best/worst quality judgments of 622 novel metaphors

In this paper our goal is to undertake a systematic assessment of the first, most widely known, and simplest computational model of metaphor comprehension, the predication model developed by Kintsch (Cognitive Science, 25(2), 173-202, 2000). 622 metaphors of the form "x is a y" were selected from a much larger set generated randomly. The metaphors were judged for quality using best/worst judgments, which asks judges to pick the best and worst metaphor from among four presented metaphors. The metaphors and their judgments have been publicly released. We modeled the judgments by extending Kintsch's predication model (2000) by systematically walking through the parameter space of that model. Our model successfully differentiated metaphors rated as good (> 1.5z) from metaphors rated as bad (< -1.5z; Cohen's d = 0.72) and was able to successfully classify good metaphors with an accuracy of 82.9%. However, it achieved a true negative rate below chance at 36.3% and had a resultantly low kappa of 0.037. The model could not distinguish unselected random metaphors from those selected by humans as having metaphorical potential. In a follow-up study we showed that the model's quality estimates reliably predict metaphor decision times, with better metaphors being judged more quickly than worse metaphors.

Metaphor Comprehension in Low and High Creative Individuals

The comprehension of metaphors involves the ability to activate a broader, more flexible set of semantic associations in order to integrate the meanings of the weakly related parts of the metaphor into a meaningful linguistic expression. Previous findings point to a relation between levels of creativity and efficiency in processing metaphoric expressions, as measured by reaction times (RTs) and error rates. Furthermore, recent studies have found that more creative individuals exhibit a relatively more flexible semantic memory structure compared to less creative individuals, which may facilitate their comprehension of novel metaphors. In the present study, lower and higher creative individuals performed a semantic relatedness judgment task on word pairs. These word pairs comprised four types of semantic relations: novel metaphors, conventional metaphors, literal word pairs, and meaningless word pairs. We hypothesized that the two groups will perform similarly in comprehending the literal, unrelated, and the conventional metaphoric word pairs. However, with respect to novel metaphors, we predicted that higher creative individuals will demonstrate better performance compared to lower creative individuals, as indicated by smaller RTs and more accurate responses. Our main finding shows that higher creative individuals were faster in comprehending both types of metaphors, conventional and novel, compared to lower creative individuals. Furthermore, higher creative individuals were significantly more accurate than lower creative individual only in comprehending novel metaphors. The findings are discussed in light of previous findings regarding the relation between metaphor comprehension, semantic memory, and creativity.