prehension what makes a metaphor difficult to….pdf

Metaphor Difficulty 1 In Press: Metaphor and Symbol prehension: What makes a metaphor difficult to understand? Walter Kintsch & Anita R. Bowles University of Colorado Send Correspondence to: Walter Kintsch Department of Psychology University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0345 ******@ 303-492-8663 Metaphor Difficulty 2 prehension difficulty was rated for metaphors of the form Noun1 -is-a- Noun2 ; in addition, pleted frames of the form Noun1 -is-________ with their literal interpretation of the metaphor. prehension was simulated with putational model based on Latent Semantic Analysis. The model matched participants’ interpretations for both easy and difficult metaphors. When interpreting easy metaphors, both the participants and the model generated highly consistent responses. When interpreting difficult metaphors, both the participants and the model generated disparate responses. Key Words metaphor latent semantic analysis prehension prehension Metaphor Difficulty 3 prehension: What makes a metaphor difficult to understand? There exists a considerable and convincing body of research in cognitive psychology and cognitive science that indicates that people understand metaphors in much the same way as they understand literal sentences (iari &Glucksberg, 1994; Gibbs,1994, 2001; Glucksberg, 1998). Some metaphors are easier to understand than others, but the same can be said for literal sentences. On the whole, the view that understanding metaphors is a plex process than understanding literal sentences is not supported by this body of research. In particular, it does not appear that prehension first involves an attempt at prehension, and when that fails, a metaphoric reinterpretation. Certainly, that is sometimes the case plex, often literary metaphors, but most ordinary metaphors encountered mon speech and writing are simply understood without any need to figure them out. Some literal sentences, too, prehension and require a certain amount of pr