The Role of Shape in Comparing Objects: How Perceptual Similarity May Affect Visual Metaphor Processing

Abstract

Comparing objects is a process necessary to cognitive tasks involving categorization. Shape is considered one of the primary vehicles for object categorization. We hypothesize that similarity in shape facilitates finding conceptual correspondences between objects, both for objects stemming from the same and from different conceptual categories. In the latter case, the comparison process requires the construction of an ad hoc category, which is also required when interpreting visual metaphors. We used three experimental tasks to investigate the role of shape in comparing objects: a similarity judgment task, a similarity rating task, and a production task. The results of our experiments support the hypothesis that an essential component of visual metaphor processing—comparing objects stemming from disparate conceptual domains—is positively affected by similarity in the objects' shape.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is part of the project “Visual Metaphor: A Psycholinguistic Perspective,” which is funded by an “Open Competition” grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

We are thankful to Hans Westerbeek and Jeske Ritsema for their assistance in data collection and Eric Postma for his help in conducting the shape context matching test. We thank Raymond Gibbs and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Notes

¹See http://www.pstnet.com/eprime.cfm

²See http://www.let.uu.nl/~Theo.Veenker/personal/projects/wwstim/doc/en/

³The two other templates are called fusions and replacements.