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PubMedDate not supplied

Older adults filter irrelevant information during metaphor comprehension.

In general, older adults are less likely than younger adults to inhibit irrelevant information when reading literal text (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Are older adults also less likely to inhibit irrelevant information during metaphor comprehension? Young (mean age 19.2 years) and older adults (mean age 73.6 years) participated in a timed property-verification task. Although the older adults were generally slower than the younger, they displayed the same pattern of data. After reading metaphors, both groups verified metaphor-relevant properties more quickly after a metaphor prime than after a literal control prime, whereas metaphor-irrelevant properties were responded to more slowly after metaphor primes, relative to the controls. These results suggest that older adults, like younger ones, enhance metaphor-relevant properties and filter out metaphor-irrelevant properties during metaphor comprehension. Older adults' metaphor comprehension processes thus seem intact. Mechanisms for filtering out metaphor-irrelevant information are considered.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Health care teams as metaphors: a preliminary study.

This pilot study attempted to uncover similarities and differences in perceptions of health care teams by the professionals who work in them and are affected by them. This study used a convenience sample of 125 health professionals from 14 disciplines to explore the types of general metaphors and sports metaphors that they apply to health care teams. Data were analyzed by gender, type of metaphor, and stated reasons for choosing a particular metaphor. Fifteen themes emerged from the analysis. In response to a question about the metaphors that they apply to teams, health professionals identified more nonsports than sports metaphors. There was no difference between males and females in the application of sports metaphors as general metaphors for teams. Also, respondents reported using different metaphors in current practice than those they had used at the end of their formal professional training. This study demonstrates that many health professionals apply unidimensional metaphors to a dynamic and complex process. The findings suggest that trainers can help team members expose and develop their metaphors to more fully encompass the complexities of the health care team.

Female↗

PubMed2004

Surfing the money tides: understanding the foreign exchange market through metaphors.

This study describes metaphorical conceptualizations of the foreign exchange market held by market participants and examines how these metaphors socially construct the financial market. Findings are based on 55 semi-structured interviews with senior foreign exchange experts at banks and at financial news providers in Europe. We analysed interview transcripts by metaphor analysis, a method based on cognitive linguistics. Results indicate that market participants' understanding of financial markets revolves around seven metaphors, namely the market as a bazaar, as a machine, as gambling, as sports, as war, as a living being and as an ocean. Each of these metaphors highlights and conceals certain aspects of the foreign exchange market and entails a different set of implications on crucial market dimensions, such as the role of other market participants and market predictability. A correspondence analysis supports our assumption that metaphorical thinking corresponds with implicit assumptions about market predictability. A comparison of deliberately generated and implicitly used metaphors reveals notable differences. In particular, implicit metaphors are predominantly organic rather than mechanical. In contrast to academic models, interactive and organic metaphors, and not the machine metaphor, dominate the market accounts of participants.

Europe↗

PubMed2002

Comprehending anaphoric metaphors.

In this study we investigate the comprehension of various kinds of anaphoric metaphors in context. We describe an experiment that manipulated the metaphoricity of simple noun + verb + ending sentences by using either a metaphoric noun or a metaphoric verb or both. Our results show that metaphoric nouns affect sentence comprehension to a greater extent than do metaphoric verbs. Thus, even though there were no sentence-reading time differences between metaphoric and literal targets, metaphoric nouns were read more slowly than were literal nouns, and they also affected the reading time of the following verb. Moreover, in trials involving metaphoric-noun targets, participants read the endings of the targets faster and made more mistakes in answering posttrial questions than they did in literal-noun trials. We argue that these results suggest a comprehension deficit for anaphoric noun metaphors even when they are preceded by a context.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

A psychoanalytic concept of metaphor.

Metaphor is defined as seeing something in terms of something else. Psychoanalysis sees the present in terms of the past and the past in terms of the present. It therefore relates past and present metaphorically to each other, which implies that both metaphor parts change each other. This view entails a broadening of the linguistic metaphor concept towards a supralinguistic, here psychoanalytic, one: metaphor is not only a phenomenon of language but of mentation; its units are not only words but psychodynamics. Familiar concepts of psychoanalytic theory are recast in the light of this psychoanalytic concept of metaphor. Symptoms are seen as the analysand's damaged ability to metaphorise past and present. Using interpretation the analyst helps the analysand to restore metaphorical processes that have been interrupted in their flow from the past to the present and from the present to the past. Metaphor restores the polysemy that is lost in neurotic suffering. The metaphorical processes within psychoanalysis are seen as common to all psychoanalytic schools that focus on the analysis of transference. The increasing attention the concept of metaphor is receiving within psychoanalysis is seen as related to a trend in today's science to more from objective categories to experiential ones.

Chronology as Topic↗

PubMed1993

Effects of familiarity and aptness on metaphor processing.

A cross-modal priming paradigm was used to examine the comprehension of metaphors varying in familiarity and aptness. In Experiments 1 and 2 high-familiar metaphors showed availability of the figurative meaning, but low-familiar (LF) metaphors did not. In Experiment 3, only LF metaphors that had been rated highly apt showed evidence of figurative activation. Experiment 4 showed evidence of figurative activation for most LF and moderate-apt metaphors. The locus of activation was investigated in Experiment 5 in which the individual words of the metaphor (topic and vehicle) served as primes. Neither topic nor vehicle showed evidence of priming the metaphor target, suggesting that activation of the metaphorical target in Experiments 1-4 was not caused by lexical activation of the words within the metaphors, but rather was due to activation of emergent properties of the metaphorical phrase.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

The moral metaphors of nursing.

The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another. Metaphorical concepts structure and reflect what we perceive, how we act, and how we relate to other people. In nursing ethics, several metaphors have emerged which have had a great impact on nursing practice. These metaphors include the military metaphor which exemplified nursing during the 1800s, the advocacy and academic metaphors which became a philosophical basis for nursing during the 1960s, and the individualist and community as caring metaphors which have emerged more recently. Although beneficial in some ways, these metaphors may be obscuring the complex moral reality of nursing practice. This article defines a moral metaphor, critiques nursing's moral metaphors, and provides an historical overview of their development with examples of how they have and do affect nursing practice.

Ethics, Nursing↗

PubMed1987

Metaphorization--making terms.

The analysts's receptivity to ambiguity is generally thought to be an essential part of his psychoanalytical practice. The interpretation of its multiple meanings can effectively create a 'bridging function' between personally metaphorical meanings and shared literal meanings. This function of ambiguous metaphor appears to be impossible in the treatment of the schizophrenic, who experiences metaphor in literal terms. Some of them, however, can utilize metaphor, indicating positive signs such as a non-psychotic part, anal retentive tendency, creativity, ambiguity tolerance, etc. This paper, based on my clinical experience, puts forward a hypothesis concerning the transitional process from the schizophrenic patient's literal experience to metaphorical understanding. To facilitate the process, the therapist's role of metaphorizing the patient's expressions, which are experienced literally, into 'here and now' events, is essential. Among the relevant technical issues, the appearance and usage of the 'in-metaphor' and the compound metaphor, which interweave the words and meanings of the two people in therapy, may play an important role. Ambiguous metaphor, which de-materializes and deodourizes the indigestible into a word, evolves alongside the establishing of interpersonal ambiguous area. It is concluded that this 'bridging' process can be promoted by the playfully shared metaphorization.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

The time-course of metaphor comprehension: an event-related potential study.

ERPs were recorded while subjects were reading short familiar metaphors (e.g., Those fighters are lions), unfamiliar metaphors (Those apprentices are lions), or literal control sentences (Those animals are lions) presented in isolation or preceded by either an irrelevant or relevant context (e.g., They are not idiotic: ...." vs. "They are not cowardly: Those fighters are lions"). The terminal word of metaphors elicited larger N400 components than did the terminal word of literal sentences (Experiment 1) suggesting that the (incongruous) literal meaning of metaphors was indeed accessed at some point during comprehension. The analysis of the 600-1000 and 1000-1400 latency bands (Late Positive Components) revealed no significant difference between metaphors and literal sentences. The manipulation of metaphor difficulty (Experiments 2 and 3) also failed to reveal any late effect specifically linked to metaphorical processing. Finally, an effect of the preceding sentence context was found in Experiments 3 and 4, as early as 300 ms following the terminal word onset. Overall, these results support a context-dependent account of metaphor comprehension stating that when contextually relevant, the metaphorical meaning is the only one accessed.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[The genome and its metaphors. Detectives, heroes or prophets?].

The new genetics, or the impetus given to this discipline by the Genome Project, aims to a change of paradigm of the Health Sciences. This change is postulated from a phenotypic approach to a genotypic one, thereby excluding the influence of the environment, which could seriously undermine the grounds for the development and exercise of Public Health. Since the beginning of the genome project, information on genetic discoveries has frequently been reported in the mass media. Metaphors are often used by geneticists and journalists to convey the complex concepts of genetic research for which there are no equivalents in the lay language. The media do not merely shape the social agenda but also provide the space in which health culture is constructed. We present the results of a preliminary study exploring the metaphors used in the three most widely-read national daily newspapers in Spain, namely ABC, El Pais and El Mundo, when reporting news of the new genetics. The possible consequences of the natural history of these metaphors, or the process through which figurative terms acquire a literal meaning, are discussed. A preliminary taxonomy for the metaphors identified was developed. Fifty-one out of 342 identified headings (14.8%) contained metaphors. Strategic metaphors such as program, control, code, map, and puzzle, were the most commonly used, followed by teleological ones such as mystery or God language and finally war-like metaphors such as attack, defeat, and capture. The three groups of metaphors are characterized by an attempt to giving intentionality to genes. Strategic metaphors predominated over teleological and war-like ones and thus a technocratic perspective could form the basis of the future construction of health culture.

Genome, Human↗

PubMed2000

Are metaphors elliptical similes?

What is the relation between metaphors and similes? Aristotle's "comparison theory" holds that metaphors are elliptical similes: "Sam is a pig" is simply a short form of "Sam is like a pig." In contrast, it has been suggested that metaphors cannot be elliptical similes because metaphors are "stronger" than similes. We know metaphors are stronger, it is argued, because of examples involving corrections, such as "Peter is not just like a rock, he is a rock." The argument from corrections can be challenged on logical and empirical grounds. The ability to correct a simile with a metaphor does not entail that metaphors are stronger than similes when used on their own, which is likely to be the most frequent case. Although four experiments indicate that when corrections are involved, metaphors are indeed stronger than similes in several respects, alas a further four experiments indicate that these differences are largely eliminated when metaphors and similes are used on their own. We note that this pattern of results is consistent with the comparison theory, and we offer an explanation of the effects of corrections.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Feminist ethics and the metaphor of AIDS.

This paper looks at a range of metaphors used within HIV/AIDS discussions and research in support of the claim that bioethicists should pay serious attention to metaphors. Metaphors shape the ways we think about problems and the types of solutions we investigate. HIV/AIDS is an especially rich field for the investigation of metaphor, since the struggles for dominance among different metaphorical options has been very evident. In the field of medical research as well as in the area of public policy, different metaphors support different strategies and, therefore, the choice of metaphor has ethical significance. I argue that feminists should engage in these debates since they have an interest in the metaphors selected. They can also learn to be more self-conscious in choosing politically liberating metaphors in other bioethics contexts.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗

PubMed2004

The use of death metaphors to understand personal meaning of death among Hong Kong Chinese undergraduates.

Many Chinese words are pictographic in nature and Chinese people often tend to use metaphorical expressions to communicate emotional feelings. The assessment of death images and metaphors provides a meaningful way of understanding personal perceptions of death among the Chinese. The purpose of this study was to establish an instrument to assess the death metaphors of Hong Kong Chinese for assessment and empirical research. Thirty death metaphor statements in Chinese were created from items of the Revised Death Fantasy Scale (RDFS; J. McLennan & C. A. Stewart, 1997) and a previous pilot study in Hong Kong (S. M. Y. Ho, 2001). The item pool was administered to 100 undergraduates together with the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale. Seven out of the 10 highest scored death metaphor statements were from the items that had been created for this study. Descriptive statistics of individual items suggested an interpersonal dimension of death perception that is not emphasized in Western literature. Factor analysis generated a 18-item Death Metaphors Scale (DMS) with 2 9-item subscales: the Positive Metaphors (f = .85) and the Negative Metaphors (f = .81). The scores of DMS subscales are significantly correlated with the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale but not with corresponding scores of the RDFS. The DMS was considered a potentially useful instrument to study death metaphors among Chinese.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Topic-vehicle interaction in metaphor comprehension.

Property comparison models of metaphor comprehension assume that the topic and vehicle terms in metaphors are both understood to be referring to their conventional literal referents. In contrast, the interactive property attribution model (Glucksberg, McGlone, & Manfredi, 1997) assumes that the vehicle is understood to be referring to a metaphoric category that includes the topic's literal referent as a member. A priming paradigm was used to test the implications of these different models. Prior to interpreting a metaphor, participants read (1) the topic or vehicle concept alone, (2) a sentence ascribing a metaphor-relevant property to one concept, or (3) a sentence ascribing a metaphor-irrelevant property to one concept. All of the prime types facilitated metaphor comprehension with the exception of sentences ascribing metaphor-irrelevant properties to vehicles. The failure of these sentences (but not their topic counterparts) to facilitate metaphor comprehension is attributable to their priming an inappropriate literal interpretation of the vehicle term. These results are consistent with the claim that irrelevant information is suppressed during language comprehension (Gernsbacher, 1990) and support the interactive property attribution model.

Cognition↗

PubMed2005

The role of the right hemisphere in processing nonsalient metaphorical meanings: application of principal components analysis to fMRI data.

Some researches indicate that the right hemisphere (RH) has a unique role in comprehending the figurative meaning of metaphors whereas the results of other studies do not support the notion of a selective role for the RH in accessing metaphorical meanings. The present research used fMRI technology to test a theoretical explanation of the above conflicting findings. This theoretical account is derived from the Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH) [Giora, R. (1997). Understanding figurative and literal language: the Graded Salience Hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 7, 183-206; Giora, R. (2003). On our mind: Salience, context and figurative language. New York: Oxford University Press], according to which the degree of meaning salience, rather than literality or nonliterality primarily affects differences between the LH and RH in linguistic processing. Thus, the GSH predicts a selective RH involvement in comprehension of novel, nonsalient metaphoric meanings and LH involvement in the comprehension of conventional, salient metaphoric meanings. Fifteen normal adults participated in a block designed fMRI experiment that compared the patterns of brain activation induced by processing the meanings of literal, conventional metaphoric, novel metaphoric and unrelated word pairs. The subjects performed a semantic judgment task. We applied the Principal Components Analysis (PCA) technique in order to find different functional networks corresponding to the different stimuli. Our results, obtained from PCA of the fMRI data indicate that the right homologue of Wernicke's area has a special role in processing novel metaphors. We suggest that a unique network, consisting of the right homologue of Wernicke's area, right and left premotor areas, right and left insula and Broca's area, is recruited for the processing of novel metaphors but not for the processing of conventional metaphors.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

[Metaphorical aspects of mistletoe therapy in patients' experiences--a qualitative study].

OBJECTIVE: Mistletoe therapy is an item of research because of its immunological features. Nevertheless, mistletoe should be also an item of research because of its semiotics. Long before R. Steiner proposed mistletoe as an anticancer drug, this plant seemed to have its meaning not by pharmacodynamics but by pharmacosemiotics and magic. Thus, metaphorical aspects of mistletoe therapy should be described by processing the transcript and paintings from a therapeutic group session of cancer patients. Especially the relation between individually and historically coded metaphors should be looked at. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Sample of this qualitative study is the transcript of a therapeutic session of 12 female malignoma patients getting mistletoe infusions (Isorel(r)) since 1.5 years in a general practitioners' practice. Sequential coding of the transcript, inventory of themes, and structural hypothesis are the first steps. The structural hypothesis is triangulated by a textual corpus containing anthroposophic and ethnographic material; then a grounded theory is made. RESULTS: The material is divided. On the one hand, there is a huge amount of historically coded, stereotypic metaphors (sun, cancer, ritual). On the other hand, 'ritual' seems not only a stereotypic metaphor but also a container of individually coded metaphors concerning body experiences (proprioceptive etc.). Metaphors from anthroposophy are rare - the metaphors seem to stem from a deeper level of ethnographic sources. The whole session has a polyphone narrative structure. Categories of semiotics such as icon, index and symbol are only by the context of interaction a suitable description for mistletoe's metaphoric function. CONCLUSIONS: Problems of bias (denominator problem, valid but not reliable) are discussed, and a proposal is made for further forms of generalization of the results (semantic differentials). Moreover, it has to be asked if different preparations of mistletoe (e.g. lectine standard, draft from planta tota) make different halos of metaphors.

Antineoplastic Agents, Phytogenic↗

PubMed1980

Understanding visual metaphor: developmental and individual differences.

The development of an instrument--the Metaphoric Triads Task (MTT)--for the assessment of metaphoric comprehension is described. In the tradition of earlier cognitive-style research, a visual triad format was adopted that offered three possible pairings of pictorial stimuli, one of which was metaphorical in character. A subject's score reflects the number of metaphoric pairings formed (with appropriate metaphoric explanations) across all of the triads of the task. Data are reported for 12 samples of subjects (ranging from 7 1/2 to 28 years of age) who responded to the MTT in a diverse array of studies. Internal analyses of the MTT yielded satisfactory reliabilities (interjudge and internal consistency) and item-sum correlations. Sex differences were negligible, but progressive improvement in MTT score with age was noted. At the same time, a slight modification of the MTT triad format generated performance levels from younger children that approximated those of children 1--3 years older who had taken the MTT in its standard form. Higher MTT scores were generally obtained by those subjects who attempted more pairings, spent more time at the task, and chose the metaphoric pair as "best" among the alternative pairing possibilities. Correlations of MTT performance with standardized tests of intellective aptitudes and achievements were inconsistent across samples and between the sexes within samples. In contrast, MTT scores were quite consistently related to solving difficult analogies, generating high-quality responses to divergent-thinking tasks, and manifesting broad categorizing and physiognomic sensitivity. Significant correlations between the MTT and a set of verbal metaphoric triads offered convergent validational evidence suggestive of a general metaphoric style. Some relation was found between MTT performance and teacher ratings of figurative language appreciation and esthetic sensitivity, though it appeared that these might be mediated by the teachers' estimate of the child's overall capability. Finally, three experimental training studies were carried out. A requirement of exhaustive pairing and informative feedback on pretest items significantly enhanced the MTT performance of the younger children. The provision of appropriate verbal labels for each picture in a triad also significantly enhanced performance by insuring that children's encoding of the pictures was consistent with the metaphoric linkage in each item.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions.

The neural networks associated with processing related pairs of words forming literal, novel, and conventional metaphorical expressions and unrelated pairs of words were studied in a group of 15 normal adults using fMRI. Subjects read the four types of linguistic expressions and decided which relation exists between the two words (metaphoric, literal, or unrelated). According to the Graded Salience Hypothesis (GSH, ), which predicts a selective RH involvement in the processing of novel, nonsalient meanings, it is primarily the degree of meaning salience of a linguistic expression rather than literality or nonliterality, which modulates the degree of left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) processing of metaphors. In the present study, novel metaphorical expressions represented the nonsalient interpretations, whereas conventional metaphors and literal expressions represented the salient interpretations. A direct comparison of the novel metaphors vs. the conventional metaphors revealed significantly stronger activity in right posterior superior temporal sulcus, right inferior frontal gyrus, and left middle frontal gyrus. These results support the GSH and suggest a special role for the RH in processing novel metaphors. Furthermore, the right PSTS may be selectively involved in verbal creativity.

Adult↗