Individual Differences in Comprehension of Contextualized Metaphors

ABSTRACT

We report a study examining the role of linguistic context in modulating the influences of individual differences in fluid and crystalized intelligence on comprehension of literary metaphors. Three conditions were compared: no context, metaphor-congruent context, and literal-congruent context. Relative to the baseline no-context condition, the metaphor-congruent context facilitated comprehension of the metaphorical meaning whereas the literal-congruent context impaired it. Measures of fluid and crystalized intelligence both made separable contributions to predicting metaphor comprehension. The metaphor-congruent context selectively increased the contribution of crystalized verbal intelligence. These findings support the hypothesis that a supportive linguistic context encourages use of semantic integration in interpreting metaphors.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Niš) internal grant No 360/1-16-1-01 to Dušan Stamenković and by NSF Grant BCS-1827374 to Keith Holyoak. We thank Aliza Ayaz, Diego Fernandez-Salvador, and Anshu Patel for assistance in data collection.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.

Notes

¹ The terms target and source are commonly used in work on analogy, as well as in cognitive linguistics (Lakoff & Turner, 1989). In linguistics, the corresponding terms tenor and vehicle are often used.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NSF [BCS-1827374]; Faculty of Philosophy (University of Niš) internal grant [360/1-16-1-01].