Metaphorical Ability Research Articles

An empirical study on the development of metaphorical comprehension of Chinese children.

Metaphor affects how people focus, remember, and process information and significantly influences children's language development. The study explored metaphorical comprehension by Chinese children of different ages (5-8 years). We collected response times and accuracy rates when they processed metaphorical and literal sentences with the graded salience. Linear mixed-effects modeling showed that Chinese children's metaphorical ability improved with age. Subsequent analysis found that the perception period of metaphorical knowledge was at age 5, the development stage of metaphorical knowledge was at age 6 and 7, and the rational decision period of metaphorical ability was at age 8. After 8-year-old, children can invoke the knowledge of the intention schema while activating the source domain, and this knowledge can be automatically and quickly mapped to the target domain. Meanwhile, language development and cognitive processing influenced the metaphorical comprehension of Chinese children, especially children of 8 years of age who had the highest correct rate and the shortest reaction time to process low-saliency metaphorical sentences, while 5-year-old children had the highest accuracy in high-saliency metaphorical sentence and 6-year-old children got the longest reaction time to process sentence in high-saliency metaphor. This study may provide evidence for improving and training metaphor comprehension in children with special needs such as those with an autism spectrum disorder.

Deficiencies and Upgrades in Artificial Intelligence Languages

In the era of artificial intelligence, people have started to have a lot of exposure to machine output language, such as online translation robot customer service, Siri, Microsoft Ice. However, these AI languages are still in the primary stage. Compared with human languages, AI languages still have many shortcomings, for example, lack of intentionality, lack of metaphorical ability. And people need to make some changes and improvements to make them reach a higher level of intelligence, so that AI languages can be closer to natural languages in various aspects, and AI products can better facilitate human production and life, as well as better serve society. This article is written around AI language, through the existing products of AI language as an example, analyzing AI language from different levels such as linguistics and philosophy, finding out the deficiencies of AI language and the aspects that need to be improved, and finally putting forward constructive opinions on how to make today's AI language reach a higher level of intelligence, that is, paying attention to the importance of metaphor in AI, and people should solve the problem of In order to solve the problem of "intelligence", the problem of "intelligence" needed to be solved first; people should not only deal with the problem of man and the world but also deal with the problem of man, nature and the imaginary world.

Can second language metaphorical competence be taught through instructional intervention? A meta-analysis.

For a long time, the traditional view regarded metaphor as merely a rhetorical device that served to enrich linguistic expression. With the continuous development of cognitive linguistics, foreign language educators began to realize the vital role of metaphor in foreign language education. This study looked at how well pedagogical interventions improve metaphorical competence by looking at how well teachers teach metaphors. After a rigorous literature search and selection process from the Chinese and English databases, 13 Chinese and 7 international studies with 51 effect sizes were included in this meta-analysis. With the help of the meta-analysis 3.0 software, the literature and heterogeneity tests were performed to ensure that the meta-analysis results were as accurate and valid as possible. The effect size tests revealed that the metaphorical instructional intervention was significantly effective in general and produced a large effect size (d = 0.888) on improving learners' metaphorical abilities. Meta-regression analyses were also conducted to examine how other factors might change the effects of the interventions. Research has shown that instructional interventions that combine prolonged input of metaphorical concepts with reinforcement of metaphorical practice can help second language learners develop metaphorical competence. Teaching puts more pressure on teachers and the learning environment, and the results of this study could help teachers teach metaphors in the future.

Characteristics of metaphor and reasoning comprehension ability of school-aged children with language development delay

Purpose: This study compares the degree of metaphor and reasoning comprehension development of three groups by evaluating the metaphor and reasoning comprehension of children with language development delay, children with matching language age, and children with matching chronological age.Methods: The subjects of the study were 15 children with delayed language development, 15 children with matching chronological age, and 15 children with matching language age. In order to find out their understanding of metaphors and reasoning, the test was conducted by presenting a stimulus plan with three stimulation pictures on one panel in which a subject selects a corresponding picture from the three pictures according to the inspector’s verbal instruction. The test consists of 70 questions, and the stimulus picture of metaphor and reasoning comprehension consists of figurative, dictionary, and inappropriate content.Results: Metaphor and reasoning comprehension was tested with the contents of metaphor ability based on substantive objects and metaphor ability based on abstract objects, with the following results. First, there was a significant difference between these groups as a result of comparing the development of metaphor and reasoning comprehension of children with delayed language development, children with matching language age, and children with matching chronological age. Second, there was no difference in metaphor and inference comprehension between the children’s group with language development delay and the children’s group with matching chronological age as they both showed high performance and their metaphor and inference comprehension was homogeneous. Third, as a result of comparing the metaphorical abilities of the children’s group with language development delay and the other children’s groups, it was found that an intervention program is needed to improve the metaphor and reasoning comprehension of children with language development delay. In particular, it is necessary to develop an arbitration method, which focuses on conceptualizing light abstract ideas, to improve their metaphor and reasoning comprehension.Conclusions: Based on this result, systematic intervention according to the degree of development of metaphor and reasoning ability is necessary to improve the social communication ability of children with delayed language development.

The Influence of the National-Cultural Image of the World on the Construction of Metaphors in the Poetic Discourse

Abstract The poetic language of Federico García Lorca amazes the reader’s imagination with the richness of images with the outward simplicity and clarity of style. Lorca’s poems simultaneously reveal to us both the national and cultural specifics of the Spanish linguistic picture of the world, and the ways of cognition and reflection of reality by the author, his assessment of the phenomena of this reality from the standpoint of the aesthetic ideal. One of the ‘keys’ of the secret of the phenomenal success of Lorca’s poetry is its metaphor city, the semantic aesthetics of which is revealed only in the context of not only the poems themselves, but also in the context of Spanish culture as a whole. The metaphor, we emphasize once again, is one of the most mysterious phenomena of language, the intuitive comprehension of which is inherent only in true poets. In a metaphor, reality escapes, as if hiding from thought, and then a deep and urgent question begins to arise before the researcher about the role of metaphor in cognition. In the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, the ability of metaphor to clearly reveal the features of national culture characterizes the Spanish linguistic consciousness and the Spanish linguistic personality. The humanities are armed with modern scientific research tools at the present stage of development and lay the foundation for studying the role of metaphor in understanding the essence of Federico Garcia Lorca's work, as well as its relationship and interaction with reality, thinking and consciousness.

Styles & Approaches of the city image in students' paintings of Fine Arts Academy

one can say that the social and urban environment could influence the general culture and establish a vision for individuals on the place and on its symbols and realistic imaginary image too. In light of this, the paintings' outputs will be one of the means of expression about the places, and how to recall and reuse them, and then, they form the styles through which the identity of the artistic work can be achieved or what it can be called as an originality or individuality. This research analyses the phenomenon of drawing the city by the students of Fine Arts College as well as follows up its educational and evaluation courses which are based upon the awareness and the metaphorical ability of the students and its development.

Metaphorical developing minds: The role of multiple factors in the development of metaphor comprehension

Metaphor understanding is traditionally thought to emerge late in childhood. Although recent findings suggest that even pre-schoolers can understand metaphor in more age appropriate paradigms, it is still unclear which skills scaffold the development of metaphorical abilities. Metaphor comprehension is a complex process relying on multiple cognitive abilities with different developmental paths, such as Alternative Naming (i.e., accepting two labels for the same referent) and Analogy Perception (i.e., detecting similarities across objects). These two abilities may prove crucial to explain the development of metaphoric competence because difficulties in one or both of them may impose additional demands linked to children’s general cognitive development. This might contribute to slow down the development of metaphor understanding. This study aims at teasing apart the contribution of Alternative Naming and Analogy Perception in the development of metaphor understanding. Using a unified picture-matching paradigm, we tested 3- and 4-year-olds in three tasks: Metaphor Comprehension, Alternative Naming and Analogy Perception. Results reveal that children with better alternative naming and analogical abilities show a better performance in the metaphor task, suggesting that both Alternative Naming and Analogy Perception play a role in the development of metaphoric competence.

AN ANTHROPOCENTRIC METAPHOR IN THE SYSTEM OF A LINGUISTIC WORLD PICTURE

The article describes the existence of a particular person in any language, defines the national-ethnic characteristics of a person’s perception. Consequently, the language scene in the universe must be understood and accepted not as a photograph, but as a drawing. Thus, an objective view of the universe is estimated according to the law of relativity. The concept of the national type, its concept, its knowledge, its status, character, purpose and position. The various paradigms, trends, directions, and flow are growing in the social and human sciences, especially in linguistics. This is determined by the accelerating pace of globalization in social life, the strengthening of interdisciplinary integration and the steady growth of scientific and technical ties related to the rational development of information and communication technologies. The cognitive approach is the result of such integration processes, and given the metaphorical ability of a person to be associated with the development of common sense of the senses, the intellectual potential of the senses is dominant. Intellectual abilities allow others to understand, see, analyze and evaluate differences.

Towards psychoanalytic contribution to linguistic metaphor theory.

This paper lays out a formulation of the psychoanalytical contribution to linguistic metaphor theory. The author's main argument is that psychoanalysis can help enrich and shed light on linguistic metaphor theories, since these have focused on the cognitive aspect, to the exclusion of the role played by affect. Based on the tight link between metaphor and symbol - both configurations of figurative language - the author shall apply ideas sourced from some of the key psychoanalytic symbolization theories, focusing in particular on Klein, Winnicott, and Ogden. The course of exploration will serve to trace the unconscious emotional aspects that participate in the metaphor's mechanism, just as they participate in the symbol's workings. The study leads to the main conclusion that the intersubjective transitional space is of substantial importance to metaphor's constitution, particularly in regard to novel metaphors. Expanding the understanding of metaphor's modus operandi has important implications in conceptual clarification and for an in-depth analytical work, and is of immense significance when it comes to analytical work with patients who suffer impairment of their metaphoric ability.

Metaphorical Thinking and Information Processing Ability

Practice of Metaphorical thinking in understanding given information promotes the communication of the two hemispheres by a bundle of connecting fibres, the corpus callosum at neo cortex level and through hippocampus at the level of limbic system. Hence, metaphorical thinking helps learners to make connections and develop patterns and relationships in parallel to the language as well as symbols relevant to the given information.

Presidential Rhetoric, Metaphor, and the Emergence of the Democracy Promotion Industry

When Ronald Reagan announced his desire for a Federal program dedicated to promoting democracy abroad, no one expected that program would grow into a $100 billion industry. This essay argues that the use of light/dark, sea, and disease metaphors animated the production of the democracy promotion industry, metaphors that built upon preexisting cultural enthymemes related to insecurity, American exceptionalism, and the U.S. role in navigating the dangers of the international. This case study suggests that presidents turn to metaphor because they recognize the power of metaphor, the ability of metaphor to connect public policy to common conceptions of America, and the difficulty opponents have in countering metaphorical depictions.

Teasing Apart the Role of Cognitive and Verbal Factors in Children's Early Metaphorical Abilities

Metaphor plays a unique role in cognitive development by structuring abstract concepts and leading to conceptual change. Existing work suggests early emergence of metaphorical abilities, with five-year-olds understanding and explaining metaphors that involve cross-domain comparisons (e.g., SPACE to TIME). Yet relatively little is known about the factors that explain this developmental change. This study focuses on spatial metaphors for time, and asks whether cognitive and/or verbal factors best explain developmental changes in three- to six-year-old children's comprehension and explanation of metaphors. The results show that children's grasp of the time concept—but not verbal ability—predicts their metaphor comprehension. Verbal ability, on the other hand, is a predictor of metaphor explanation, even after controlling for age. The results thus suggest that cognitive and verbal factors selectively predict children's emerging metaphorical abilities.

Metaphor: For adults only?

Many experimental studies from the 70s and 80s show that children do not understand metaphors until fairly late in development (not until adolescence, some claim). I will argue that children’s metaphorical abilities may not be as weak as they first appear. Findings suggesting a poor comprehension of metaphor by young children might be better explained by factors other than purportedly inadequate pragmatic abilities. Furthermore, attested cases of metaphor production by children have often been re-analysed either as cases of overextension (i.e., erroneous extension of the term’s conventional denotation) or as cases of pretence, and are thus not considered to be genuine metaphors. I would like to explore the hypothesis that such re-analyses do not preclude the possibility that young children possess the necessary abilities to produce metaphors. Instead, some aspects of overextension and pretence may pave the way to metaphorical abilities.

Comparing the Metaphoric Ability Between Language Delayed Children and Normal Children

Comparing the Metaphoric Ability Between Language Delayed Children and Normal Children

Metaphors We Move By: Children's Developing Understanding of Metaphorical Motion in Typologically Distinct Languages

This paper examines comprehension of metaphorical motion (e.g., "time flies by") among 4- and 5-year-old children, who are learning English or Turkish as their native language. Results show both cross-linguistic similarities and differences. In both languages, children can understand metaphors embedded in stories by age 4, and provide verbal explanations for isolated instances of metaphors by age 5. Moreover, in both languages, changes in children's metaphorical ability are indexed by changes in their gestures. By age 4, children treat metaphorical concepts as physical objects and produce gestures that convey physical motion; whereas, by age 5, children begin to convey metaphorical meaning by producing gestures in spaces aligned with the target domain of the metaphor. Children also differ in their expression of metaphorical motion in the two languages; children learning English convey manner of motion more extensively than children learning Turkish. The findings underscore metaphor as an early emerging cognitive and linguistic ability, and provide further evidence for the embodied nature of conceptual metaphors.

Figuring out the figurative: Individual differences in literary metaphor comprehension

This paper explores the cognitive and affective-conative correlates of metaphor comprehension. We first introduce the concept of metaphor by describing its essential features and functions. Then, we give a short review of key findings derived from cognitive and developmental studies of metaphor comprehension. Finally, we discuss individual differences in metaphoric skill and sensitivity and present the results of an empirical investigation in which we sought to determine the relationship between literary metaphor comprehension, the subjective experience of metaphors and the readers? verbal intelligence and personality traits. On the basis of our research findings, it is argued that metaphoric ability represents a central facet of intelligence and that the Test of Literary Metaphor Comprehension designed in our study may be viewed as a valid measure of verbal ability. .

Interpreting figurative language expressions.

Interpretations of figurative language expressions were compared in matched samples of 28 language/learning-disabled (LLD) and 28 academically achieving (non-LLD) adolescents. LLD adolescents performed significantly poorer than their non-LLD age peers. All but 1 of 12 figurative language expressions contributed to the significant group difference. Stepwise discriminant analysis identified 3 figurative expressions as the best single predictors of an LLD group placement. Qualitative analysis indicated that the LLD group produced predominantly literal error interpretations while the non-LLD controls produced predominantly partial and/or incomplete error interpretations. The results indicate that interpretation and matching of figurative language expressions can assess levels of acquisition of metaphoric ability by adolescents and provide suggestions for intervention.

Modes of Metaphor

In spite of some revealing insights that interdisciplinary research on metaphor has obtained in recent years, the nature of metaphor, and how and why it pervades all aspects of cognition remains enigmatic. In particular, the ability of metaphor to create similarities where none existed before seems somewhat mystical, despite several attempts to explain it cognitively. Moreover, on the surface, this characteristic seems incompatible with the accounts of metaphor that explain it on the basis of the existing similarities-structural or otherwise-between the source and the target. An attempt is made in this article to present a unifying account of metaphor from which many of its characteristics can be explained cognitively. The account is based on introducing a distinction between an object and its representation, and on an interactive view of cognition in which both the cognitive agent and the external world have an equal role to play. In this framework, it is argued that there are three different modes of me...

Black Ash, Orange Fire, Collected Poems 1959–1985 by William Witherup

Reviews 391 the dust-jacket or the spine, the book can be hazardous to one’sribs, lungs, and diaphragm,—organic parts that can be injured by immoderate laughter. The book is not, however, the complete collection of Barney Tullus, and many fans may be disappointed by the absence of their favorite—mine being “Barney Tullus and the Bosboy.” One hopes that the University of New Mexico Press will publish another collection, perhaps called The Best of Barney Tullus. Both Dr. Walker and the editors at UNM Press should be faulted, how­ ever, on their failure to keep abreast of contemporary scholarship. Walker certainly is no longer accurate in his statement (p. 3) that “a critical history of Barney Tullus of course remains to be written, although earnest graduate students may already be at work on such a project.” Indeed that project has been completed (see my dissertation in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy in English at Metropolitan City’s Cosmopolitan College of Fine and Industrial Arts), and I am presently preparing a manuscript for the Western Writers Series (Boise State University) which, through both internal and external evidence, will indeed identify the authors of (first) the academic satires, and (second) the western stories, as well as naming the persons on whom the characters of Barney, Andrew Pickens, Mort, and Sill are based. What I am suggesting in this manuscript is that the Barney Tullus works may be the greatesthoax in American literature since Fern Gravel’sOh, Millersville. PROFESSOR TULLY BARNOUS Pinville Community College of Literature and Range Management Black Ash, Orange Fire, Collected Poems 1959-1985. By William Witherup, (Point Reyes Station: Floating Island Publications, 1986. 217 pages, $10.00.) This intriguing volume of poems reflects its title: some of the poems sparkle fire like diamonds, while some are rather like stones. At his best, Witherup forges striking metaphorical ties to the larger world on topics great and small, as in poems like “Hornet’sNest” and “Lettuce” respectively. In the erotic love poems of the section called “Following the Blind Women,” the fusion of love and locale does not always take and hold, yet there are little gems that sparkle here also, like “To a Salesgirl in Juarez”: “I travel with her still through personal deserts, / my water bag filled with the elixir of her smile, / for even the lizards are sick / of seeing the black, swollen tongue of poets.” When this metaphorical ability is properly fused with powerful emotions like the anger of “Freeway”:“An infected vein / carrying filth to and from the city; / a funnel / draining a huge operating table. / Even the light here / isthe color of pus,” or the satiric disgust of “To the President of the Company”: “that produces pop-top cans / ... / that turns out plastic rings / for sixpacks,” the results are first-rate poetic reading. 392 Western American Literature Not to be overlooked are the echoes of the poet’s wide reading and work in some traditional forms like “The Ballad of the Sea Witch” and “A Hybrid Villanelle on a Line by Li Po.” Sharing in the dilemma of all contemporary poets, the perpetual challenge of transforming his private world of feelings and insights into the larger world of shared communication, Witherup succeeds far more than he misses the mark, and when he hits it, the “orange fire” indeed shines forth as in “Run­ ning”: “My eyes inhale the purple flowers / and swish them around in the skull. / an afternoon cocktail. / Water and fire the petals, / water and fire the heart.” CHARLES H. DAUGHADAY Murray State University Break the Mirror. By Nanao Sakaki. (San Francisco: North Point, 1987. 126 pages, $9.95.) Imagine yourself looking up a classic U-shaped alpine valley toward the cirque and the high ridges at the head of it. There is a small stream stair­ stepping down toward you, left to right, right to left; it drops level to level, over clean granite, slides through a slow, grassy place; the water is clear, clear, clear. Standing here, looking at the little creek, you feel yourself to be touching the real freshness, the real wildness—the world of source. No need to do anything but laugh and enjoy...

L'étude expérimentale des métaphores

Summary This review seeks to cover the main theoretical contributions and experimental researches dealing with the comprehension of metaphors by adults and children. Various linguistic works dealing with the definition of metaphors constitute the basis of psychological research. Richard's definition (1936) is often used by psychologists : a metaphor is characterized by two terms and by the relationship which exists between them. The subject term is called « topic », the term used metaphorically is called « vehicle »; the relationship between « topic » and « vehicle » or what they have in common is the « ground ». Studies with adult subjects suggest three kinds of metaphor corresponding to different psychological functionings. 1. Metaphors, in current use in our language, based upon concrete similarity relationships and working by verbal association (for example « this man is a lion », or « Juliet is the sun »). 2. Metaphors based upon similarity reationships more or less abstract but dealing only with one particularly dominant feature of the topic or the vehicle. Then the metaphor would work by a transfer of features between the topic and the vehicle (for example : « the pupil remained stony y>). 3. Metaphors based upon very abstract similarity relationships and dealing globally with the topic and the vehicle. The metaphor functions then via a new schematization of the topic induced by the vehicle (for example « Regardless of the danger the troops marched on » in a context relating that children persist on playing the fool although their babysitter threaten to punish them). Studies with children indicate that metaphorical ability must be consi-dered as the resuit of a long development including several stages. Very young children's metaphors occur during symbolic play : they consist in renaming familiar objects present in the child's environment ; they are based on physical or functional similarities and in most cases on isolated properties of objects rather than on a convergent whole of dimensions. Very young childreh's metaphors are very different from the ones built from abstract, psychological similarities relative to time and space and tvhich are only understood from 10-11 years.