School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel; Beit Berl College, Institute of Education, Beit Berl, Israel.
Department of Criminology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 May;142:107458. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107458. Epub 2020 Apr 7.
Metaphoric language is one of the most common expressions of creative cognition in everyday life. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying metaphor generation remain largely unexplained. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between various cognitive functions and both novel and conventional metaphor generation. Ninety-five undergraduate students were administered a metaphor generation task that assesses novel and conventional metaphor generation, along with a battery of different cognitive measures: vocabulary; divergent thinking (Tel Aviv Creativity Test), working memory (WM) via digit span tests, executive functions (EFs) using the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) questionnaire, and selective attention (lateralized global-local digit task). Results of a path analysis indicated that - whereas only selective attention contributed to conventional metaphor generation - selective attention, divergent thinking, and EFs contributed to novel metaphor generation beyond vocabulary and WM. Thus, the results indicate that although both novel and conventional metaphor generation are linked to attentional resources and inhibitory control, the greater creativity inherent in novel metaphor generation appears to reflect a more complex set of cognitive processes than conventional metaphor generation.
隐喻语言是日常生活中创造性认知最常见的表达方式之一。然而，隐喻生成的认知机制在很大程度上仍未得到解释。在这项研究中，我们旨在研究各种认知功能与新颖和传统隐喻生成之间的关系。95 名本科生接受了一项隐喻生成任务的评估，该任务评估新颖和传统的隐喻生成，以及一系列不同的认知测试：词汇量；发散思维（特拉维夫创造力测试）、工作记忆（通过数字跨度测试进行 WM）、执行功能（使用行为评定量表进行 EF）和选择性注意（侧化全局-局部数字任务）。路径分析的结果表明，虽然只有选择性注意有助于传统隐喻的生成，但选择性注意、发散思维和执行功能除了词汇量和 WM 外，还有助于新颖隐喻的生成。因此，结果表明，尽管新颖和传统的隐喻生成都与注意力资源和抑制控制有关，但新颖隐喻生成所固有的更大创造力似乎反映了比传统隐喻生成更复杂的一系列认知过程。
