Abstract
Although several types of figurative language exist, neuropsychological tests of non-literal language have focused on proverbs. Metaphors in the form X is (a) Y (e.g., The body’s immunological response is a battle against disease.) place a lower demand on language skills and are more easily manipulated for novelty than proverbs. Forty healthy participants completed the Metaphor Interpretation Test (developed by the authors). The task includes 20 items chosen from a list of metaphors that were rated on several scales (e.g. imagery, aptness) in a study by Katz et al. (Metaphor Symb Act 3(4):191–214, 1988). Participants were asked to rate the familiarity and provide an explanation of each metaphor. A scoring system was developed to categorize answers into: abstract complete (AC), abstract partial (AP), concrete (CT), and other/unrelated (OT) types. Participants also completed short-term memory and divided attention tests. Overall, participants produced 56 % AC, 25.38 % AP, 7.88 % CT, and 10.88 % OT responses. It was found that a measure of verbal short-term memory span was the best predictor of performance on this task (adjusted \(R^{2}= .369\)). It appears that short-term memory span, not working memory or divided attention, contributes most to providing abstract responses in explaining metaphors. This is in line with the idea that when one accesses the semantic network associated with a novel metaphor, one must hold this information in mind long enough to search for and link similar cognitive networks.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albert, M. S., Wolfe, J., & Lafleche, G. (1990). Differences in abstraction ability with age. Psychology and Aging, 5(1), 94–100. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.5.1.94.
Anil, A. E., Kivircik, B. B., Batur, S., Kabakçi, E., Kitis, A., Güven, E., et al. (2003). The Turkish version of the auditory consonant trigram test as a measure of working memory: A normative study. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 17(2), 159–169.
Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford England, New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.
Baddeley, A. (2002). Working memory and language processing. Advances in Cognitive Science, 4(2), 5–14.
Blasko, D. G., & Connine, C. M. (1993). Effects of familiarity and aptness on metaphor processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(2), 295–308. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.19.2.295.
Boone, K. B. (1999). Neuropsychological assessment of executive functions: Impact of age, education, gender, intellectual level, and vascular status on executive test scores. In B. L. Miller & J. L. Cummings (Eds.), The human frontal lobes: Functions and disorders (pp. 247–260). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Boone, K. B., Pontón, M. O., Gorsuch, R. L., González, J. J., & Miller, B. L. (1998). Factor analysis of four measures of prefrontal lobe functioning. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 13(7), 585–595.
Brown, J. (1958). Some tests of the decay theory of immediate memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 10(1), 12–21. doi:10.1080/17470215808416249.
Brown, S. J., Rourke, B. P., & Cicchetti, D. V. (1989). Reliability of tests and measures used in the neuropsychological assessment of children. Clinical Neuropsychologist, 3(4), 353–368. doi:10.1080/13854048908401484.
Burgess, C., & Chiarello, C. (1996). Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying metaphor comprehension and other figurative language. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 11(1), 67–84. doi:10.1207/s15327868ms1101_4.
Case, R., Kurland, D. M., & Goldberg, J. (1982). Operational efficiency and the growth of short-term memory span. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 33(3), 386–404. doi:10.1016/0022-0965(82)90054-6.
Chiappe, D. L., & Chiappe, P. (2007). The role of working memory in metaphor production and comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(2), 172–188. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.11.006.
Colom, R., Abad, F. J., Quiroga, M. Á., Shih, P. C., & Flores-Mendoza, C. (2008). Working memory and intelligence are highly related constructs, but why? Intelligence, 36(6), 584–606.
Conway, A., Cowan, N., & Bunting, M. (2001). The cocktail party phenomenon revisited: The importance of working memory capacity. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 331–335. Retrieved from http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11495122.
Delis, D. C., Kaplan, E., & Kramer, J. H. (2001). Delis–Kaplan executive function system examiner’s manual. San Antonio: NCS Pearson, Inc.
Fleming, K., Goldberg, T. E., Gold, J. M., & Weinberger, D. R. (1995). Verbal working memory dysfunction in schizophrenia: Use of a Brown-Peterson paradigm. Psychiatry Research, 56(2), 155–161.
Floden, D., Stuss, D. T., & Craik, F. I. (2000). Age differences in performance on two versions of the Brown-Peterson Task. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 7(4), 245–259.
Giora, R. (1997). Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 8, 183–206.
Giora, R., & Fein, O. (1999). On understanding familiar and less-familiar figurative language. Journal of Pragmatics, 31(12), 1601–1618. doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00006-5.
Glucksberg, S. (2003). The psycholinguistics of metaphor. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(2), 92–96. Retrieved from http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/13646613/v07i0002/92_tpom.
Glucksberg, S. (2011). In K. Ahmad (Ed.), Understanding metaphors: The paradox of unlike things compared. Springer, Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-1757-2_1.
Glucksberg, S., Gildea, P., & Bookin, H. B. (1982). On understanding nonliteral speech: Can people ignore metaphors? Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 21(1), 85–98. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(82)90467-4.
Hambleton, R. K., Swaminathan, H., & Rogers, H. J. (1991). Fundamentals of item response theory. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, Inc.
Honeck, R. P., & Hoffman, R. R. (1980). Cognition and figurative language. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Johnson, A. T. (1996). Comprehension of metaphors and similes: A reaction time study. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 11(2), 145–159. doi:10.1207/s15327868ms1102_3.
Katz, A. N., Paivio, A., Marschark, M., & Clark, J. M. (1988). Norms for 204 literary and 260 nonliterary metaphors on 10 psychological dimensions. Metaphor & Symbolic Activity, 3(4), 191–214. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/617576763?accountid=14789.
Kintsch, W. (2000). Metaphor comprehension: A computational theory. New York: Springer. doi:10.3758/BF03212981.
Klonoff, H., Fibiger, C. H., & Hutton, G. H. (1970). Neuropsychological patterns in chronic schizophrenia. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 150(4), 291–300. doi:10.1097/00005053-197004000-00004.
Landau, M. J., Meier, B. P., & Keefer, L. A. (2010). A metaphor-enriched social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 136(6), 1045–1067. doi:10.1037/a0020970.
Lezak, M. D., Howieson, D. B., & Loring, D. W. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment. USA: Oxford University Press.
Markovits, H., Doyon, C., & Simoneau, M. (2002). Individual differences in working memory and conditional reasoning with concrete and abstract content. Thinking & Reasoning, 8(2), 97–107.
Martin, I., & McDonald, S. (2003). Weak coherence, no theory of mind, or executive dysfunction? solving the puzzle of pragmatic language disorders. Brain and Language, 85(3), 451–466. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00070-1.
Meyers, J. E., Volkert, K., & Diep, A. (2000). Sentence repetition test: Updated norms and clinical utility. Applied Neuropsychology, 7(3), 154–159. doi:10.1207/S15324826AN0703_6.
Mogle, J. A., Lovett, B. J., Stawski, R. S., & Sliwinski, M. J. (2008). What’s so special about working memory? An examination of the relationships among working memory, secondary memory, and fluid intelligence. Psychological Science, 19(11), 1071–1077.
Moran, C., & Gillon, G. (2005). Inference comprehension of adolescents with traumatic brain injury: A working memory hypothesis. Brain Injury, 19(10), 743–751. doi:10.1080/02699050500110199.
Mordkoff, J. T., & Yantis, S. (1991). An interactive race model of divided attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17(2), 520–538. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.17.2.520.
Morrow, L. A., & Ryan, C. (2002). Normative data for a working memory test: The four word short-term memory test. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 16(3), 373–380. doi:10.1076/clin.16.3.373.13850.
Nippold, M. A., Uhden, L. D., & Schwarz, I. E. (1997). Proverb explanation through the lifespan: A developmental study of adolescents and adults. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 40(2), 245–253. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rzh&AN=1998076519&site=ehost-live.
Ortony, A., Schallert, D. L., Reynolds, R. E., & Antos, S. J. (1978). Interpreting metaphors and idioms: Some effects of context on comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17(4), 465–477. doi:10.1016/S0022-5371(78)90283-9.
Papagno, C. (2001). Comprehension of metaphors and idioms in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Brain, 124(7), 1450–1460. Retrieved from http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/00068950/v124i0007/1450_comaiipwad.
Schnitzer, M. L., & Pedreira, M. A. (2005). A neuropsychological theory of metaphor. Language Sciences, 27(1), 31–49. doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2004.10.001.
Searle, J. R. (1979). What is an intentional state? Mind, 88(349), 74–92. doi:10.2307/2253065.
Smith, P. K., & Trope, Y. (2006). You focus on the forest when you’re in charge of the trees: Power priming and abstract information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(4), 578.
Smith, P. K., Wigboldus, D. H., & Dijksterhuis, A. P. (2008). Abstract thinking increases one’s sense of power. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(2), 378–385.
Spreen, O., Benton, A. L., & University of Victoria Neuropsychology Laboratory. (1977). Neurosensory Center Comprehensive Examination for Aphasia (NCCEA): Manual of instructions. Victoria, BC: Department of Psychology, University of Victoria.
Strauss, E., Sherman, E. M., & Spreen, O. (2006). A compendium of neuropsychological tests: Administration, norms, and commentary. USA: Oxford University Press.
Stuss, D. T., Stethem, L. L., & Poirier, C. A. (1987). Comparison of three tests of attention and rapid information processing across six age groups. Clinical Neuropsychologist, 1(2), 139–152. doi:10.1080/13854048708520046.
Tulsky, D., Zhu, J., & Ledbetter, M. F. (1997). WAIS-III/WMS-III technical manual. San Antonio: Psychological Corporation.
Uekermann, J., Thoma, P., & Daum, I. (2008). Proverb interpretation changes in aging. Brain and Cognition, 67(1), 51–57. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2007.11.003.
Utsumi, A. (2011). Computational exploration of metaphor comprehension processes using a semantic space model. Cognitive Science, 35(2), 251–296. doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01144.x.
Vargo, M. E., & Black, F. W. (1984). Normative data for the Spreen-Benton sentence repetition test: Its relationship to age, intelligence, and memory. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, 20(4), 585–590.
Waltz, D. L., & Pollack, J. B. (1985). Massively parallel parsing: A strongly interactive model of natural language interpretation. Cognitive Science, 9(1), 51–74. doi:10.1016/S0364-0213(85)80009-4.
Wechsler, D. (1997). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Third Edition and Wechsler Memory Scale—Third Edition technical manual. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corportation.
Wechsler, D. (2008). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale\(\textregistered \) 4th Edition (WAIS\(\textregistered \)-IV). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.
Winner, E., & Gardner, H. (1977). The comprehension of metaphor in brain-damaged patients. Brain, 100(4), 717–729. doi:10.1093/brain/100.4.717.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendix
Appendix
See Appendix Table 4.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Iskandar, S., Baird, A.D. The Role of Working Memory and Divided Attention in Metaphor Interpretation. J Psycholinguist Res 43, 555–568 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-013-9267-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-013-9267-1