Age, working memory, figurative language type, and reading ability: influencing factors in African American adults' comprehension of figurative language.

EDITORIAL published: 05 January 2016 doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00699 Editorial: The Metaphorical Brain Seana Coulson 1 * and Vicky T. Lai 2 Cognitive Science Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA, 2 Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, autism, embodiment, executive function, figurative language comprehension, hemispheric specialization, right hemisphere damage, schizophrenia The Editorial on the Research Topic The Metaphorical Brain Edited and reviewed by: Hauke R. Heekeren, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany *Correspondence: Seana Coulson scoulson@ucsd.edu Received: 03 September 2015 Accepted: 11 December 2015 Published: 05 January 2016 Citation: Coulson S and Lai VT (2016) Editorial: The Metaphorical Brain. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 9:699. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00699 Long considered a peripheral topic in linguistics, metaphor is increasingly viewed as a central feature of higher cognition and abstract thought. Investigation of the neural substrate of metaphor has, similarly, become more sophisticated, involving increasingly specific suggestions about the processes involved in its comprehension. This Frontiers Research Topic brings together contributions from a diverse array of cognitive neuroscience to offer a snapshot of current research on the neural substrate of figurative language, and present a number of avenues for future research. The result is an interdisciplinary perspective on the differences between literal and figurative language and how the underlying neurobiological processes can be investigated. Indeed, most investigations into the neural substrate of metaphor ultimately concern the relationship between literal and metaphorical meanings. In their excellent review paper, Vulchanova and colleagues outline the arguments for and against the continuity thesis that literal and metaphorical language comprehension recruits essentially the same processing mechanisms. Using autism as a lens through which to consider the issue, they review data that indicate dissociations in the comprehension of literal and figurative language within individuals with ASD. Ultimately, they suggest figurative language deficits in ASD stem from the difficulty these individuals have integrating contextual information to build the situation model. One source of support for the idea that literal and metaphorical comprehension processes recruit distinct neural substrates is the increasingly contentious claim that the right cerebral hemisphere (RH) plays a crucial role in the comprehension of metaphor, but not literal language. Ianni and colleagues note that much of the data supporting this claim comes from the study of brain-injured patients that have employed sub-optimal tasks for assessing metaphor comprehension. They present a novel test with fine-grained sensitivity to participants’ ability to understand both literal and metaphorical language. They present data from three patients to demonstrate (i) comparable impairment on literal and metaphorical language, (ii) greater impairment for metaphorical than literal language, and (iii) selective impairment on metaphorical language. Addressing the issue of hemispheric specialization in healthy adults, Lai and colleagues examine functional neuroimaging data as participants read literal and metaphorical sentences with varying degrees of familiarity. They found that decreasing familiarity (i.e., increasing novelty) of both literal and metaphorical language led to greater activation bilaterally, with more extensive recruitment of LH brain regions overall. However, the relative contribution of the RH was greater for novel metaphors, as a result of reduced LH activation for novel literal language. Faust and colleagues utilize network theory in their discussion of hemispheric specialization for metaphor comprehension. In particular, they suggest that the LH exhibits semantic rigidity, manifested by networks in which each node is connected to a small number of other nodes. Rigid networks are well suited for the rapid retrieval of conventional meanings, but ill-suited for creating meanings needed for novel metaphors. The RH exhibits semantic chaos, manifested by highly Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | www.frontiersin.org January 2016 | Volume 9 | Article 699

The limited evidence on figurative language in deaf children, as well as 'professional intuitions', has led those who teach them to conclude that reading comprehension will be significantly complicated by figurative language. However, there are disagreements among practitioners as to how best to manage figurative language when it appears in text. Generally, some sort of textual modification is made, although those for and against 'simplified texts' are split on this issue. Those who favour them suggest either that complex vocabulary and syntax be reconstructed or that they be gradually introduced. However, reformulations are seldom standard nor are the figurative tropes such as metaphor, simile, personification etc. systematically introduced. Those against simplified texts argue that the problem of figurative language control is not one of linguistic complexity, but one of cognitive processing: deaf children can grasp inferred or indirect meaning so long as the referential domain is made clear. Such comprehension comes by way of demonstration, practice and feedback and figurative language need not present a special problem. In this present study, 14 deaf and hard-of-hearing children and youths who had been randomly assigned to one of two groups were given an original story entitled 'Peaches the Cat' and asked to read it. One group read a literal version of the story and one group read a figurative version in which all textual answers to the question were masked with figurative phraseology. Both groups answered the questions above a chance level and the figurative version did not prove to be more difficult than the literal version. The two groups were comparable on hearing loss and on reading and language ability.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

First-order theory of mind (ToM) is necessary for comprehension of metaphors, and second-order ToM is necessary for comprehension of irony. This study investigated the role of ToM and language ability in comprehending figurative language in 50 Taiwanese children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs) compared with 50 typically developing children. Results showed that the No-ToM HFASDs group performed worse than the first-order ToM HFASDs group and the second-order ToM HFASDs group in comprehension of metaphors, irony, sarcasm and indirect reproach, but not for indirect request. Receptive vocabulary correlated only with metaphor comprehension. The volatility of results seen among studies in terms of the relationship between ToM and figurative language comprehension is discussed.

Inferences and metaphoric comprehension in unilaterally implanted children with adequate formal oral language performance

Background and AimsChildren with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual disability often face challenges in understanding written text. However, considerable variability in this area underscores the need to examine their reading profiles and the factors influencing the development of reading comprehension (RC). This study investigates the RC of upper elementary school children with ASD compared to typically developing (TD) peers and explores the role of broader linguistic abilities in RC, with a specific focus on pragmatic competence (e.g., figurative language comprehension). Nonlinguistic factors such as age and nonverbal cognitive capacity are also considered. A secondary aim is to assess the potential heterogeneity in RC and linguistic abilities within the ASD sample.MethodsIn total, 35 children with ASD and 35 TD controls (mean age = 10.7 years, SD = 0.97) were matched for age, gender, and nonverbal cognitive ability using Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices. Both groups completed assessments of RC, structural language skills (receptive vocabulary and morphosyntax), and figurative language competence. To evaluate variability, the ASD group was divided into two subgroups based on RC performance.ResultsParticipants with ASD scored significantly lower than their TD peers in RC, morphosyntactic skills, and figurative language comprehension, but no significant differences were observed in receptive vocabulary. For children with ASD, chronological age, nonverbal cognitive ability, and receptive vocabulary accounted for significant variance in RC. In contrast, RC in TD children was predicted by morphosyntactic ability and figurative competence. Furthermore, the substantial heterogeneity within the ASD group was evident, highlighting their variability across the range of examined variables.Conclusions and ImplicationsThe findings indicate that children with ASD as a group experience notable difficulties in text comprehension and language processing at the morphosyntactic and pragmatic levels, despite achieving receptive vocabulary and nonverbal cognitive scores comparable to those of their TD peers. The two groups appear to employ distinct strategies for deriving meaning from text. The pronounced variability in RC and linguistic abilities among ASD participants underscores the complexity of their reading and language profiles, highlighting the importance of tailored educational assessments and interventions, which are further discussed.

The Aging Factor in Presupposition Processing

BackgroundA pragmatic disruption is observed in several clinical conditions and especially in schizophrenia. It is estimated that over 75% of patients affected by schizophrenia present a pervasive and wide impairment of pragmatic abilities, encompassing both comprehension and production abilities, thus confirming the hypothesis of a wide Pragmatic Language Disorder in schizophrenia. More specifically, the comprehension of figurative languages, such as metaphors, idioms, and irony, is the most compromised domain in schizophrenia.Poor pragmatics has a relevant impact on daily functioning, by contributing to social isolation and lower quality of life. Only few pragmatic treatments have been developed and tested in schizophrenia, focusing only on specific pragmatic features and without using a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) design.This study aimed at investigating the efficacy of PragmaCom Training (PT), a novel 12-weeks intervention specifically developed to enhance pragmatics in schizophrenia.Methods30 patients with schizophrenia, according to DSM 5, were randomly assigned to PT to an active control group (ACG). All patients were assessed for global pragmatics with the Assessment of Pragmatic Abilities and Cognitive Substrates test, APACS), metaphor comprehension (Physical and Mental Metaphors task, PMM), executive functions (Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia, Tower of London score, BACS), abstract thinking (Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for Schizophrenia, N5 score, PANSS), and daily functioning (Quality of Life Scale, QLS).To quantify the magnitude of changes after the PT, effect sizes were estimated using Cohen’s d (Cohen, 1988) for APACS, PMM, PANSS N5 Score, and QLS only in PT Group. The effect of PT in enhancing pragmatic abilities, the abstract thinking and daily functioning was tested between groups by means of several ANCOVA, entering post-training measures as dependent variables, measures at the baseline and executive functions as covariates, and treatment (PT vs ACG) as grouping variables.ResultsPatients treated with PT showed small to medium-large effect-sizes in global pragmatics (0.25), metaphors comprehension (0.72), functioning (0.23), and abstract thinking (-0.18). ANCOVAs revealed a significant effect of PT in enhancing global pragmatic abilities (F=5.4, p=.03), metaphor comprehension (F=8.94, p=.007) and abstract thinking (F=8.1, p=.01). No significant effect was found for functioning.DiscussionThis is the first study using a RCT design to test the efficacy of a pragmatic training. PT is a novel training specifically developed to target the pragmatic impairments that characterize schizophrenia. This study confirms the efficacy of PT in improving multiple domains, encompassing global pragmatics, the comprehension of figurative language, and abstract thinking in schizophrenia. Impact on functioning is also expected. However, in line with literature, it is likely to occur at later time points, since it requires the chance to apply the enhanced abilities in ecological contexts.

Due to the growing volume of available textual information, there is a great demand for Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques that can automatically process and manage texts, supporting the information retrieval and communication in core areas of society (e.g. healthcare, business, and science). NLP techniques have to tackle the often ambiguous and linguistic structures that people use in everyday speech. As such, there are many issues that have to be considered, for instance slang, grammatical errors, regional dialects, figurative language , etc. Figurative Language (FL), such as irony , sarcasm , simile, and metaphor, poses a serious challenge to NLP systems. FL is a frequent phenomenon within human communication, occurring both in spoken and written discourse including books, websites, fora, chats, social network posts, news articles and product reviews. Indeed, knowing what people think can help companies, political parties, and other public entities in strategizing and decision-making polices. When people are engaged in an informal conversation, they almost inevitably use irony (or sarcasm) to express something else or different than stated by the literal sentence meaning. Sentiment analysis methods can be easily misled by the presence of words that have a strong polarity but are used sarcastically, which means that the opposite polarity was intended. Several efforts have been recently devoted to detect and tackle FL phenomena in social media. Many of applications rely on task-specific lexicons (e.g. dictionaries, word classifications) or Machine Learning algorithms. Increasingly, numerous companies have begun to leverage automated methods for inferring consumer sentiment from online reviews and other sources. A system capable of interpreting FL would be extremely beneficial to a wide range of practical NLP applications. In this sense, this chapter aims at evaluating how two specific domains of FL, sarcasm and irony, affect Sentiment Analysis (SA) tools. The study’s ultimate goal is to find out if FL hinders the performance (polarity detection) of SA systems due to the presence of ironic context. Our results indicate that computational intelligence approaches are more suitable in presence of irony and sarcasm in Twitter classification.

This research explored the hypothesis that the rich and varied experience of black youth with figurative language outside school would enhance their understanding of figurative language in school texts. Path analysis confirmed that for black students, “sounding” skill as well as general verbal ability, has a direct influence on figurative language comprehension. Black language ability influences figurative language comprehension indirectly through its effect on sounding skill. For white students, only general verbal ability affects figurative language comprehension.

This research explored the hypothesis that the rich and varied experience of black youth with figurative language outside school would enhance their understanding of figurative language in school texts. Path analysis confirmed that for black students, “sounding” skill as well as general verbal ability, has a direct influence on figurative language comprehension. Black language ability influences figurative language comprehension indirectly through its effect on sounding skill. For white students, only general verbal ability affects figurative language comprehension.

We present a meta-analysis of studies that compare figurative language comprehension in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and in typically developing controls who were matched based on chronological age or/and language ability. A total of 41 studies and 45 independent effect sizes were included based on predetermined inclusion criteria. Group matching strategy, age, types of figurative language, and cross-linguistic differences were examined as predictors that might explain heterogeneity in effect sizes. Overall, individuals with autism spectrum disorder showed poorer comprehension of figurative language than their typically developing peers (Hedges’ g = –0.57). A meta-regression analysis showed that group matching strategy and types of figurative language were significantly related to differences in effect sizes, whereas chronological age and cross-linguistic differences were not. Differences between the autism spectrum disorder and typically developing groups were small and nonsignificant when the groups were matched based on the language ability. Metaphors were more difficult to comprehend for individuals with autism spectrum disorder compared with typically developing controls than were irony and sarcasm. Our findings highlight the critical role of core language skills in figurative language comprehension. Interventions and educational programmes designed to improve social communication skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorder may beneficially target core language skills in addition to social skills.

Given that the use and comprehension of figurative language is one of the most intriguing abilities of the mind, this study extends the line of research related to the process of understanding figurative language to individual differences. The starting assumption is that individual differences affect our ability to understand figurative language, focusing on fluid and crystallized intelligence. These types of intelligence were measured in relation to the ability t1o understand metaphors, and their influence was investigated indirectly, through tests that reliably examine both types of intelligence. The research investigates non-literary metaphors in the Serbian language, normed according to the following dimensions: metaphoricity, aptness, and familiarity. This study seeks to show whether and to what extent fluid and/or crystallized intelligence influence the process of understanding non-literary metaphors normed according to different features. Through selected verbal and non-verbal tests, Raven’s progressive matrices (Raven, 1938), semantic similarities test (Stamenković, Ichien, & Holyoak, 2019a), as well as a non-literary metaphor comprehension test, it is determined in which way fluid and crystallized intelligence play roles in the process of metaphor comprehension, as well as which possible cognitive mechanism allows us to process metaphors. The results show that the comprehension of non-literary metaphors mostly relies on crystallized intelligence, while fluid intelligence seems to be employed in individual cases, only with some groups of metaphors.

FIGURE 1. The Atkinson and Shiffrin Model of memory is diagramed in the gray panel. Sensory information is perceived and suppressed via selective attention processes, then briefly held in the limited-capacity modality-specific sensory register. Information enhanced by selective attention enters into short term memory (STM). The process of rehearsal (maintenance) can sustain information in STM. Information in STM is automatically encoded (stored, consolidated) into long term memory (LTM). Although flawed, this model continues to provide a simple and easy approach to understanding memory. Assumptions that proved to be inconsistent with research included that any information in STM will transfer to LTM and that STM is required

The comprehension of metaphor, a vivid and figurative language, is a complex endeavor requiring cooperation among multiple cognitive systems. There are still many important questions regarding neural mechanisms implicated in specific types of metaphor. To address these questions, we conducted activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses on 30 studies (containing data of 480 participants) and meta-analytic connectivity modeling analyses. First, the results showed that metaphor comprehension engaged the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, lingual gyrus, and middle occipital gyrus-all in the left hemisphere. In addition to the commonly reported networks of language and attention, metaphor comprehension engaged networks of visual. Second, sub-analysis showed that the contextual complexity can modulate figurativeness, with the convergence on the left fusiform gyrus during metaphor comprehension at discourse-level. Especially, right hemisphere only showed convergence in studies of novel metaphors, suggesting that the right hemisphere is more associated with difficulty than metaphorical. The work here extends knowledge of the neural mechanisms underlying metaphor comprehension in individual brain regions and neural networks.

The experimental research on figurative language comprehension is often difficult to categorize because of the diverse ways scholars describe their work and its theoretical implications. Several researchers clearly aim to present broad models of figurative language comprehension and attempt to show how their specific theories can possibly explain understanding of many different kinds of tropes. Even if these research programs do not always provide empirical evidence related to each kind of figurative speech typically studied in the field, there is still an overt attempt to apply the findings of various empirical tests to broader conceptions of how figurative language, and language in general, is comprehended. There are other researchers, however, who typically focus on one or two tropes in their empirical studies. Although this latter group of psycholinguists does not usually provide full-scale models of figurative language comprehension, they sometimes suggest how their empirical findings bear on enduring issues in the study of figurative language processing. Finally, there are scholars, and their empirical studies, that focus exclusively on specific tropes and aim only to construct theories appropriate for understanding those figures. It should also come as no surprise that some psycholinguists flow back and forth among these various research strategies, and summarizing these scholars’ contributions can be challenging. Our aim in this chapter is to evaluate different traditional and contemporary models of figurative language comprehension. The emphasis here is on research that bears on general issues related to the ease or difficulty of comprehending figurative language as a general form of linguistic meaning. Following the traditional belief about differences between literal and figurative language (see Chapter 2), psycholinguists have focused a great deal on examining the possibility that figurative language is understood after some sort of preliminary, default analysis of an expression's literal meaning. Psycholinguistic research over the past 40 years, however, has struggled to create adequate accounts of sentence parsing, and discourse processing, even for so-called literal language. Although there has been significant progress in the study of different aspects of online sentence processing in regard to specific topics (e.g., the interaction of syntax and semantics in sentence parsing, reference assignment, ambiguity resolution, establishing coherence relations in text), there is no single, coherent agreed-on position as to what people ordinarily do when they encounter language word-by-word in speech and reading. Thus, there is not one single position on so-called literal meaning processing, even among scholars who embrace traditional views of literal meaning. This state of affairs highlights some of the problems with theories of interpreting figurative meaning that are based on unverified assumptions as to how so-called literal language is usually understood.