Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind.

In 3 experiments we show that, relative to reading literal sentences, reading metaphor enhances performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), an instrument meant to measure first-order theory of mind. In each experiment participants read metaphorical or literal sentences in different...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 43; no. 6; pp. 953 - 964
Autores principales: Bowes, Andrea, Katz, Albert
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Aug2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Metaphor creates intimacy and temporarily enhances theory of mind.
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        au:
          Bowes, Andrea
          Katz, Albert
        affil: University of Western Ontario, London Canada
      su:
        Analysis of variance
        Communication
        Discourse analysis
        Interpersonal relations
        Metaphor
        Task performance
        Probability theory
        Questionnaires
        Research funding
        Scale analysis (Psychology)
        Thought & thinking
        Data analysis software
        Medical coding
      sug:
        subj:
          Analysis of variance
          Communication
          Discourse analysis
          Interpersonal relations
          Metaphor
          Task performance
          Probability theory
          Questionnaires
          Research funding
          Scale analysis (Psychology)
          Thought & thinking
          Data analysis software
          Medical coding
      keyword:
        Discourse processing
        Language comprehension
        Pragmatics
        Theory of mind
        Discourse processing
        Language comprehension
        Pragmatics
        Theory of mind
      ab: In 3 experiments we show that, relative to reading literal sentences, reading metaphor enhances performance on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), an instrument meant to measure first-order theory of mind. In each experiment participants read metaphorical or literal sentences in different contexts and afterwards completed an ostensibly unrelated task, the RMET. In Experiment 1, participants were presented metaphorical or literal sentences in short discourse contexts and were asked questions about the characters in the stories. We found that when one of the characters used metaphor, they were rated as having a closer relationship. A novel finding is that the degree to which the characters are perceived as being more intimate in the metaphor condition, the higher their scores on the RMET. In Experiment 2, participants created fictive contexts to prompting literal or metaphorical sentences. This writing task was followed by the RMET. Participants who created contexts for the metaphors scored significantly higher on the RMET. In Experiment 3, participants read metaphors or literal counterparts without any discourse contexts. Once again, participants scored higher on the RMET after reading metaphorical as opposed to literal sentences. Additional analyses across the 3 experiments revealed that metaphors but not literal counterparts were associated with fictive contexts that contained reference to mental states and idioms with emotional content (Experiment 2), were associated with a sense of intimacy between interlocutors (Experiment 1), the presence of affective words in the created context (Experiment 2), and association with a human agent when context was not presented (Experiment 3).
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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