Simile Comprehension Research Articles

Conventionality matters in Chinese metaphor but not simile comprehension: evidence from event-related potentials.

Metaphor and simile, two prevalent forms of figurative language widely employed in daily communication, serve as significant research subjects in linguistics. The Career of Metaphor Theory in cognitive linguistics posits that as conventionality increases, the cognitive mechanisms of metaphor comprehension shift from "comparison" to "categorization." In line with this notion, prior electrophysiological investigations have revealed that novel metaphors elicit a stronger N400 brain response compared to conventional metaphors. However, the observed N400 difference between conventional and novel metaphors may merely stem from the familiarity contrast between them, as conventional metaphors are typically more familiar than novel ones. To address this dichotomy, the present study not only compared the N400 responses between conventional and novel metaphors but also between conventional and novel similes. While conventional and novel similes differ in familiarity, similar to conventional and novel metaphors, both are processed via "comparison" mechanisms. The results revealed that novel metaphors elicited larger N400 amplitudes compared to conventional metaphors, aligning with previous findings. In contrast, no significant N400 differences were observed between conventional and novel similes, suggesting that familiarity disparity is unlikely to account for N400 distinctions. Our findings imply that conventional and novel metaphors undergo distinct cognitive processing mechanisms ("comparison" versus "categorization"), thereby providing further empirical validation for the Career of Metaphor Theory.

A simile is (like) a metaphor: Comparing metaphor and simile processing across the familiarity spectrum.

One of Katz's significant contributions to the study of figurative language is his work highlighting the importance of familiarity in metaphor processing. In this study, we examined how metaphor and simile comprehension change as a function of familiarity. The Categorization model (Glucksberg, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2003, 7, 92) proposes that metaphor comprehension relies on an automatic process (categorization) regardless of familiarity. By contrast, the Career of Metaphor model (Bowdle & Gentner, Psychological Review, 2005, 112, 193) proposes that as conventionality or familiarity declines, comprehension shifts from categorization to comparison, a controlled, effortful process. Both models assume that similes, regardless of familiarity, are understood through controlled, comparison processes. The present study used a resource depletion manipulation to investigate the processes recruited in metaphor and simile comprehension. Because resource depletion negatively impacts controlled, effortful processes but does not affect automatic processes (Schmeichel et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, 85, 33), comparing the effects of resource depletion on comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar metaphors and similes may shed light on the comprehension processes (controlled or automatic) being used. Across two experiments, we induced resource depletion using a Stroop task and tested the impact of depletion on metaphor and simile comprehension. Metaphor stimuli were drawn from Katz et al. (Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 1988, 3, 191) normed database; similes were constructed by adding the word like to each metaphor (e.g., love is (like) a flower). For both tropes, resource depletion slowed comprehension of unfamiliar expressions but had no little-or-no impact on highly familiar expressions. Our results suggest that comprehension of both similes and metaphors shifts from automatic to controlled processing as familiarity decreases. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Development of Simile Comprehension: From Similarity to Scalar Implicature.

Similes require two different pragmatic skills: appreciating the intended similarity and deriving a scalar implicature (e.g., "Lucy is like a parrot" normally implies that Lucy is not a parrot), but previous studies overlooked this second skill. In Experiment 1, preschoolers (N=48; ages 3-5) understood "X is like a Y" as an expression of similarity. In Experiment 2 (N=99; ages 3-6, 13) and Experiment 3 (N=201; ages 3-5 and adults), participants received metaphors ("Lucy is a parrot") or similes ("Lucy is like a parrot") as clues to select one of three images (a parrot, a girl or a parrot-looking girl). An early developmental trend revealed that 3-year-olds started deriving the implicature "X is not a Y," whereas 5-year-olds performed like adults.

Comparison of Narrative Comprehension and Inference-Making Ability in Native Tamil Speakers in Monolingual and Bilingual Context

ABSTRACT The present study was carried out with 120 Native Tamil speakers to know the effects of age and instructional language on narrative comprehension and inference-making ability. Children from 3rd to 5th grades (8 to 11 years) were divided into Group A (n = 60; Monolinguals) and Group B (n = 60; Bilinguals). Seven questions were framed to assess literal content (2 questions), coherence inference (2 questions), simile comprehension (2 questions), and elaborative inference (1 question). Written responses were obtained from participants after listening to the audiotape of a narrative passage. Group A provided responses in Tamil after listening to the passage in Tamil, and Group B provided responses in Tamil and English after listening to passages in Tamil and English. The responses were scored by three speech-language pathologists and average scores were statistically analyzed. The scores of the statistical analysis showed a difference of performance only across age. Qualitative analysis of inference types showed literal and coherence inferences were easier to make than simile comprehension and elaborative inferences for all groups. The findings of the study highlight how the comprehension of the narrative macrostructure and inference making is affected by age and instructional language.

Examining Children’s Simile Comprehension Skills

This study aimed to determine the children’s skills of comprehending similes. The participants of the research consisted of 120 children that were aged 5-6 and enrolled in preschool education institutions. The data were collected with a 16-item success test. The items in the test were orally administered to the participants during the interviews. The responses were recorded, and the analysis was carried out through the evaluation of the content of the recordings by two experts. The answers were encoded and transferred to the statistics program. Depending on the research questions, descriptive statistics were calculated, and a series of Mann Whitney U test was performed. According to the findings, the success rate of the item about simile comprehension at which participants were most successful appeared to be 56.7%. In addition, it was found that the participants’ levels of simile comprehension did not differ based on gender, but they differed based on their duration of continuing preschool education. Participants attending public schools were more successful than those attending private preschools, and the 6-year-old children appeared to be more successful than the 5-year-olds. Keywords: Comprehension, figurative language, language acquisition, simile, metaphor

Comprehension of Simile in Language Development Delayed Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Comprehension of Simile in Language Development Delayed Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Comprehension of Simile in Language Development Delayed Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Comprehension of Simile in Language Development Delayed Children with Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Comprehension of literal statements and similes in Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorders

ABSTRACTWhile it has been proposed, following relevance theory, that similes can be understood at a purely literal level on a par with literal statements, it remains unclear whether children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) perform similarly to typically developing (TD) children in comprehending literal statements and similes. The present study investigated comprehension of literal statements and similes in Cantonese-speaking children with HFASD and TD children matched on both chronological age and verbal mental age. An utterance-picture matching task was devised to assess their comprehension of literal statements and similes in Cantonese. Overall results showed that Cantonese-speaking children with HFASD performed worse than TD children in comprehending literal statements and similes, and both groups showed more difficulty in comprehending similes than literal statements. After the effects of chronological age and verbal mental age were controlled for, no group difference was found between children with HFASD and TD children in comprehending literal statements, whereas the group difference in simile comprehension still existed, suggesting that children with HFASD showed deficits in comprehending similes relative to TD children. These findings challenge the proposal that similes can be understood at a purely literal level on a par with literal statements. Future studies should investigate the role of different aspects of language ability and different levels of theory-of-mind skills in comprehension of similes and metaphors in children with HFASD.

Impaired comprehension of metaphorical expressions in very mild Alzheimer's disease.

BackgroundBrain-damaged patients often have difficulty understanding non-literal language. However, whether patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have comprehension deficits of metaphorical expressions, in contrast with non-metaphorical (literal) expressions, remains unclear.Patients and methodsThe subjects were 40 AD patients; 20 had mild AD (17–23 points on the Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE]), and 20 had very mild AD (≥24 points). Twenty normal elderly controls were also enrolled as a control group. Thirty sentences that contained novel similes (Items) were prepared. For each Item, four explanatory choices, consisting of one correct response and three foils, were provided. The participants were asked to choose the written statement that best represented the Item’s meaning. In addition, all the subjects completed the Token Test.ResultsThe patients with mild AD had significantly lower scores than the normal controls on both the simile comprehension test and the Token Test. However, the patients with very mild AD exhibited significantly lower scores on the simile comprehension test, but not on the Token Test. The distributions of error types for the simile test differed between the mild AD group and the other groups. The mild AD patients made more errors that were “far” from the correct responses.ConclusionPatients with AD are more likely to have comprehension deficits of metaphorical expressions than comprehension deficits of non-metaphorical expressions. Pragmatic language dysfunction may precede formal language dysfunction during the progression of AD.

Differences in Vocabulary Knowledge as a Function of Children’s Oral Comprehension Performance in Greek: A Cross-Sectional Developmental Study

Abstract The present cross-sectional developmental study examined differences in vocabulary knowledge as a function of children’s oral comprehension skill and age. Participants (174 children, aged 5.5, 7.5, and 9.5 years) were presented with oral stories in Greek, accompanied by questions tapping higher-order comprehension skills (generation of necessary and elaborative inferences, simile comprehension, and comprehension control). Children performing at the highest and the lowest 25% of every age level were identified as skilled and less-skilled oral comprehenders, respectively (5.5. years: 14 vs. 17, 7.5 years: 15 vs. 15, and 9.5 years: 15 vs. 19, less-skilled vs. skilled comprehenders). Participants were assessed with a receptive vocabulary task and with short-term and working memory tasks. In line with our hypotheses, the effect of comprehension skill on vocabulary knowledge increased in our eldest group, even when we controlled for memory effects. Our findings contribute to the discussion of advantages observed in vocabulary growth for skilled comprehenders, attributed to a significant extent to their early linguistic experiences and oral language skills rather than their intellectual and learning potential. We point at the additive value of identifying comprehension skill groups based on oral measures, allowing for the evaluation of higher-order text processing skills from the critical preschool years.

A Study on Simile Comprehension in Adults with Brain Damage

A Study on Simile Comprehension in Adults with Brain Damage

A Simile Recognition System using a Commonsense Sensory Association Method

Abstract We propose a method for comprehending the significance of metaphorical expressions by using an intuitive sensory association method implemented on computer. The metaphors we address in this work are similes. When simile expressions are used in human conversation, it appears that the listener uses intuitive sensory associations, cultivated through experience, to recall the characteristics of the subject and the predicate and comprehend the meaning of the metaphor by replacing the predicate with another appropriate word to describe the subject. A sensory association method has been proposed that is capable of clarifying these sorts of intuitive sensory relationships between nouns and their characteristics. The sensory association method outputs the sensations and impressions that humans naturally feel in response to a given noun. In this work, we construct a simile comprehension system based on the sensory association method and seek to use it to get computers to understand similes. In this paper, we define comprehension of a simile—such as “cheeks like apples”—as to convert the simile into the phrase “red cheeks.” The capacity to perform this conversion demonstrates the computer's understanding that the two expressions are synonymous. The results of our tests indicated an accuracy of 65.7%; thus, by introducing a sensory association method we were able to exceed the accuracy achieved in a previous study.

Comprehension of sarcasm, metaphor and simile in Williams syndrome

Although people with Williams syndrome (WS) are often characterized as friendly and sociable with relatively good general language abilities, there is emerging evidence of pragmatic difficulties and trouble comprehending aspects of non-literal language. The main aim was to investigate the comprehension of sarcasm, metaphor and simile in WS relative to typically developing controls. A secondary aim was to examine the association between non-literal language comprehension and a range of other cognitive abilities, both in WS and in the typically developing population. Twenty-six participants with WS were compared with 26 typically developing chronological age-matched controls (TDCA) and 26 typically developing mental age-matched controls (TDMA). Participants listened to stories in which characters made non-literal comments. They were then asked what each character meant by their comment. In order to investigate the second aim of the study, cognitive abilities were also assessed using the Woodcock-Johnson (Revised) Tests of Cognitive Ability, including expressive vocabulary, verbal working memory, perceptual integration, inferential reasoning and overall cognitive ability. Comprehension of non-literal language in WS was significantly below TDCA levels, but was not significantly different to TDMA levels. For typically developing controls, each of the cognitive measures was strongly correlated with each of the measures of non-literal language comprehension. The same relationships were not always found for participants with WS. In particular, sarcasm comprehension in WS was not significantly correlated with any of the assessed cognitive abilities, and expressive vocabulary was not significantly correlated with any measure of non-literal comprehension. Comprehension of simile in WS is below TDCA levels but seems on par with their mental age level. It appears that comprehension of sarcasm and metaphors is above the cognitive capabilities and mental age level of most individuals with WS. Further, the pattern of correlations between non-literal comprehension and cognitive abilities in WS relative to controls suggests that perhaps the linguistic and cognitive systems that underpin non-literal language comprehension in typically developing individuals interact and integrate in different ways in WS.

Does simile comprehension differ from metaphor comprehension? A functional MRI study

Since Aristotle, people have believed that metaphors and similes express the same type of figurative meaning, despite the fact that they are expressed with different sentence patterns. In contrast, recent psycholinguistic models have suggested that metaphors and similes may promote different comprehension processes. In this study, we investigated the neural substrates involved in the comprehension of metaphor and simile using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate whether simile comprehension differs from metaphor comprehension or not. In the metaphor and simile sentence conditions, higher activation was seen in the left inferior frontal gyrus. This result suggests that the activation in both metaphor and simile conditions indicates similar patterns in the left frontal region. The results also suggest that similes elicit higher levels of activation in the medial frontal region which might be related to inference processes, whereas metaphors elicit more right-sided prefrontal activation which might be related to figurative language comprehension.

Working Memory Contributions to Reading Comprehension Components in Middle Childhood Children

This study examined working memory contributions to reading comprehension subskills in Greek children (mean age 9 years, 1 month). The phonological loop of the Baddeley and Hitch working memory model was assessed with 3 recall tasks (words, nonwords, and digits) and a word list matching task. The central executive (CE) was assessed with 3 tasks (listening, counting, and backward digit recall). Participants were also given a receptive vocabulary task, a reading fluency task, and written stories accompanied by comprehension questions. Canonical correlation analyses showed that the comprehension variables were related to the CE rather than the phonological loop measures. CE functions were more strongly associated with elaborative inference generation (involving significant offline processing) and comprehension control (involving metacognitive monitoring). Smaller yet significant associations were observed between the CE and the necessary inference and literal comprehension measures, whereas a moderate relationship was found in the case of the simile comprehension variable. Among the CE variables, listening recall demonstrated the highest loading on the canonical function, followed by moderate yet significant counting and backward digit recall loadings. Vocabulary was found to fully mediate several associations between working memory and comprehension measures; however, the relationship between listening recall and elaborative inferences was partly mediated. Reading fluency and, on several occasions, Greek vocabulary knowledge did not mediate the relationships between CE measures and comprehension skills assessed. This study demonstrates the usefulness of CE measures for identifying young children's possible difficulties in carrying out specific reading comprehension processes.

The Comprehension of Similes and Metaphors by Learning Disabled and Nonlearning-Disabled Children

This study reports results from a comparison of learning-disabled and nonlearning-disabled children's comprehension of similes and metaphors. Eight context setting paragraph-length stories were used to measure third through six graders figurative language comprehension. Significant differences were found in the overall performance of the two groups on both conditions at each grade level tested. In general, the older learning-disabled children's performance was most similar to the performance of the younger nonlearning-disabled children. The proficiency of the two groups on the two metaphoric types was also compared. In contrast with their nonlearning-disabled peers, the learning-disabled children's performance was significantly better for the simile condition. Because there was no difference in the semantic content of the two metaphoric types, their better performance on the simile condition appeared to be due to the explicitness of the comparison signaled by the grammatical surface structure of the simile. Metacognitive factors, in this case, the recognition of metaphoric usage and the need to compare the disparate domains involved in metaphoric comprehension, appear implicated in learning-disabled children's understanding of figurative language.