Processing of metaphoric language: An investigation of the three-stage model of metaphor comprehension

Recent experiments that have compared processing of metaphoric and literal language in light of the three-stage model have methodological weaknesses. The study reported in this paper was designed to circumvent these weaknesses. Findings of this study demonstrated longer reading times for metaphors when compared to literals. This result lends support to the three-stage model and to the possibility that serial processing occurs during metaphor comprehension.

[1]  Willem J. M. Levelt.  Hierarchical clustering algorithms in the psychology of grammar , 1970 .

[2]  James A. Kulik,et al.  S-R and R-S paired-associate learning with varying occurrence of response members , 1962 .

[3]  H. H. Clark.  The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research. , 1973 .

[4]  H. Grice.  Logic and conversation , 1975 .

[5]  M A Just,et al.  A theory of reading: from eye fixations to comprehension. , 1980, Psychological review.

[6]  R. Jarvella.  Syntactic processing of connected speech , 1971 .

[7]  Andrew Ortony,et al.  Interpreting Metaphors and Idioms: Some Effects of Context on Comprehension. Technical Report No. 93. , 1978 .

[8]  M. Garrett,et al.  The interaction of perceptual processes and ambiguous sentences , 1973, Memory & cognition.

[9]  P. Gildea,et al.  On understanding metaphor: the role of context , 1983 .

[10]  J. Fodor,et al.  The psychological reality of linguistic segments , 1965 .

[11]  Raymond W. Gibbs,et al.  Contextual effects in understanding indirect requests , 1979 .

[12]  D. J. Foss.  Decision processes during sentence comprehension: Effects of lexical item difficulty and position upon decision times , 1969 .

[13]  R. Gibbs.  Your Wish Is My Command; Convention and Context in Interpreting Indirect Requests. , 1981 .

[14]  A. Jensen,et al.  The Stroop color-word test: a review. , 1966, Acta psychologica.

[15]  Carol Conrad,et al.  Context effects in sentence comprehension: A study of the subjective lexicon , 1974, Memory & cognition.

[16]  T G Bever,et al.  Syntactic Structure Modifies Attention during Speech Perception and Recognition , 1969, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[17]  Marie Bienkowski,et al.  Automatic access of the meanings of ambiguous words in context: Some limitations of knowledge-based processing , 1982, Cognitive Psychology.

[18]  P. Gildea,et al.  On understanding nonliteral speech: Can people ignore metaphors? , 1982 .

[19]  Davin Caplan.  Clause boundaries and recognition latencies for words in sentences , 1972 .

[20]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Understanding what is meant from what is said: A study in conversationally conveyed requests , 1975 .

[21]  H. H. Clark.  Responding to indirect speech acts , 1979, Cognitive Psychology.

[22]  Helen Smith Cairns,et al.  Lexical Information Processing During Sentence Comprehension. , 1975 .