Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This research investigates the process by which people understand metaphors. W e apply processing distinctions from computational models of analogy to derive predictions for psychological theories of metaphor. W e distinguish two classes of theories: those that begin with a matching process (e.g Centner & Clement, 1988; Ortony, 1979) and those that begin with a mapping process (e.g. Gluckserg and Keysar, 1990). In matching theories, processing begins with a comparison of the two terms of the metaphor. In mapping theories, processing begins by deriving an abstraction from the base (or vehicle) term, which is then mapped to the target (or topic). In three experiments, w e recorded subjects' time to interpret metaphors. The metaphors were preceded by either the base term, the target term, or nothing. The rationale was as follows. First, interpretations should be faster with advanced terms than without, simply because of advanced encoding. The important prediction is that if the initial process is mapping from the base, then seeing the base in advanced should be more facilitative than seeing the target in advanced. Matching models predict no difference in interpretation time between base and target priming. The results gena:ally supp(Hied matching-fixst models, although support f w mapping-first models was found with highly conventional metaphors.