Bibliometric assessment of world scholars' international publications related to conceptual metaphor

Research on metaphor has gained increasing attention of world's scholars since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson's collaborated book Metaphors We Live By in 1980. The present study comprises a pioneering review of publications on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). It aimed to use the CiteSpace software to provide a clear overview of international research in relation to CMT. In total, 4,458 bibliometric recordings ranging from 1980 to 2022 were collected from the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection. The descriptive analysis presents the trend of annual publications, the top 10 most prolific journals and the top 10 most productive authors. A document co-citation analysis was conducted via CiteSpace to navigate the key documents in this field. A visualization of keywords and its cluster analysis were conducted to show the research fields and dominant topics. The top 5 keywords with high frequency were language, comprehension, conceptual metaphor, discourse, and figurative language. The most prominent 5 clusters are labeled as right hemisphere, self, time, teacher education, and corpus linguistics. The present review through CiteSpace flags the need for more investigations of CMT from more aspects or interdisciplinary studies, such as metaphor translation, metaphor in literature, metaphor and corpus linguistics, etc.

The Language of Pain: Is There a Relationship Between Metaphor Use and Adjustment to Chronic Pain?

OBJECTIVE

Metaphor, frequently used in chronic pain, can function as a communicative tool, facilitating understanding and empathy from others. Previous research has demonstrated that specific linguistic markers exist for areas such as pain catastrophizing, mood, as well as diagnostic categories. The current study sought to examine potential associations between the types of pain metaphors used and diagnostic category, disability, and mood.

DESIGN

Online cross-sectional survey in Sydney, Australia.

SUBJECTS

People with chronic pain (n = 247, age 19-78 years, M = 43.69).

METHODS

The data collected included demographics, pain metaphors, the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales (DASS-21). Associations between metaphor source domains, obtained via Systematic Metaphor Analysis, and scores on the BPI, DASS-21, as well as diagnostic group were considered using binary logistic analysis.

RESULTS

Use of different pain metaphors was not associated with pain intensity, however the extent to which pain interfered with daily life did have a relationship with use of metaphorical language. Preliminary support was found for an association between the use of certain pain metaphors and self-reported diagnostic categories, notably Endometriosis, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, and Neuropathic pain.

CONCLUSIONS

There may be specific linguistic metaphorical markers to indicate pain interference and for particular diagnoses. Appreciation of pain metaphors has potential to facilitate communication and enhance understanding in interactions between clinicians and people with chronic pain.

A qualitative study on the development and rectification of advanced medical students' misconceptions about the physiological electrocardiogram (ECG)

Purpose: The study takes a qualitative and explorative approach to capture the concepts that German medical students have of the physiological electrocardiogram (ECG) which they acquired during their preclinical training. These concepts are then considered for possible misconceptions. Afterwards a theory-based intervention which allows subjects to see the connection of the curve progression with the spatial spreading of excitation (animated vector loop) is put to the test. Methods: In the course of a diagnosis of learning potentials, individual students participated in problem-centred, guided interviews. The developed intervention was tested in separately conducted teaching experiments using thinking aloud protocols. The data evaluation was done through qualitative content analysis. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory, conceptions and their underlying embodied cognition were analysed. Results: One of the subjects' typical misinterpretations is taking the progression of the ECG tracing for a mere increase and decrease of the myocardium's electrical activity, rather than connecting it with its spatial and temporal aspects. The data evaluation has shown that the newly developed theory-based intervention can lead to re-learning. Reconstructed metaphorical concepts illustrate this process of understanding. It is exemplarily shown how, through the course of the interviews, students are enabled to appropriately explain ECGs as the two-dimensional representation of the spatial excitation propagation in the heart. Conclusion: By capturing typical misconceptions of the physiological electrocardiogram and demonstrating interventions that support learning, the study provides a contribution to comprehensive learning which can be used in the basic education of medical students.

Why Smoggy Days Suppress Our Mood: Automatic Association Between Clarity and Valence

The intuition of clarity-valence association seems to be pervasive in daily life, however, whether there exists a potential association between clarity (i.e., operationalized as visual resolution) and affect in human cognition remains unknown. The present study conducted five experiments, and demonstrated the clarity-valence congruency effect, that is, the evaluations showed performance advantage in the congruent conditions (clear-positive, blurry-negative). Experiments 1 through 3 demonstrated the influence of the perception of clarity on the conceptualization of affective valence, while Experiments 4 and 5 verified the absence of the influence of conceptualization on perception, thus the unidirectionality of clarity-valence association in cognition is confirmed. The findings extend the affective perceptual-conceptual associations into the dimension of clarity, thus providing support for the ideas of embodied cognition as well as implications for our preference for clarity and aversion to blur.