Columbus Georgie, Sheikh Naveed A, Côté-Lecaldare Marilena, Häuser Katja, Baum Shari R, Titone Debra
Department of Psychology, McGill University Montreal, QC, Canada ; Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, McGill University Montreal, QC, Canada.
Department of Psychology, McGill University Montreal, QC, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2015 Jan 13;8:1057. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.01057. eCollection 2014.
Metaphors are common elements of language that allow us to creatively stretch the limits of word meaning. However, metaphors vary in their degree of novelty, which determines whether people must create new meanings on-line or retrieve previously known metaphorical meanings from memory. Such variations affect the degree to which general cognitive capacities such as executive control are required for successful comprehension. We investigated whether individual differences in executive control relate to metaphor processing using eye movement measures of reading. Thirty-nine participants read sentences including metaphors or idioms, another form of figurative language that is more likely to rely on meaning retrieval. They also completed the AX-CPT, a domain-general executive control task. In Experiment 1, we examined sentences containing metaphorical or literal uses of verbs, presented with or without prior context. In Experiment 2, we examined sentences containing idioms or literal phrases for the same participants to determine whether the link to executive control was qualitatively similar or different to Experiment 1. When metaphors were low familiar, all people read verbs used as metaphors more slowly than verbs used literally (this difference was smaller for high familiar metaphors). Executive control capacity modulated this pattern in that high executive control readers spent more time reading verbs when a prior context forced a particular interpretation (metaphorical or literal), and they had faster total metaphor reading times when there was a prior context. Interestingly, executive control did not relate to idiom processing for the same readers. Here, all readers had faster total reading times for high familiar idioms than literal phrases. Thus, executive control relates to metaphor but not idiom processing for these readers, and for the particular metaphor and idiom reading manipulations presented.
隐喻是语言中的常见元素，使我们能够创造性地拓展词义的界限。然而，隐喻的新颖程度各不相同，这决定了人们是必须在线创造新的含义，还是从记忆中检索先前已知的隐喻含义。这种差异会影响成功理解所需的一般认知能力（如执行控制）的程度。我们使用阅读的眼动测量方法，研究了执行控制方面的个体差异是否与隐喻处理有关。39名参与者阅读包含隐喻或习语（另一种更可能依赖于含义检索的比喻性语言形式）的句子。他们还完成了AX-CPT，这是一项通用的执行控制任务。在实验1中，我们检查了包含动词隐喻用法或字面用法的句子，这些句子有或没有先前的语境。在实验2中，我们为相同的参与者检查了包含习语或字面短语的句子，以确定与执行控制的联系在性质上与实验1相似还是不同。当隐喻不太常见时，所有人阅读用作隐喻的动词比阅读字面用法的动词要慢（对于非常见隐喻，这种差异较小）。执行控制能力调节了这种模式，即高执行控制能力的读者在先前语境迫使特定解释（隐喻或字面）时，阅读动词花费的时间更多，并且在有先前语境时，他们的隐喻总阅读时间更快。有趣的是，对于相同的读者，执行控制与习语处理无关。在这里，所有读者阅读非常见习语的总阅读时间比阅读字面短语的总阅读时间要快。因此，对于这些读者以及所呈现的特定隐喻和习语阅读操作，执行控制与隐喻处理有关，但与习语处理无关。
