Age-related changes in the appreciation of novel metaphoric semantic relations

ABSTRACT

In the present study we tested the possibility that older adults differ from younger adults in their appreciation of metaphoric semantic relations, and that age-related changes occur due to the perception of novel metaphors. In the first experiment 35 younger (mean age = 23.1) and 35 older adults (mean age = 75.3) were asked to rate the plausibility of metaphoric, literal, and unrelated word pairs. Relative to young participants, older participants rated fewer expressions as metaphorically plausible. The second experiment was conducted to examine whether the findings of the first experiment could be accounted for by an age-associated difference in the appreciation of metaphors with different levels of familiarity. In the second experiment, 25 younger (mean age = 24.4) and 25 older adults (mean age = 77.5) were asked to rate the familiarity level of the plausible metaphoric expressions. Relative to young participants, older participants rated fewer expressions as novel and more expressions as familiar. The results suggest that novelty plays an important role in appreciating the plausibility of semantic relationships, and age-related changes are associated with the appreciation of the novelty of expressions.

Keywords:

• Novel metaphors
• Non-literal language
• Verbal knowledge
• Language comprehension
• Right hemisphere

Notes

¹We first set three agreement criteria: 75, 70, and 65%, and analyzed the data according to each of these levels. Although the same pattern of results emerged, the higher the criterion was, the fewer participants agreed that the expression was plausible and therefore the fewer expressions were available for further analysis. In order to have a sufficient number of metaphors for the second experiment, we used the less stringent criterion (i.e., 65%).