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Sketchpad Series

What makes Metaphors hard(er)? An exploration of behavioral responses as a step towards neuroimaging analysis using fNIRS

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Anna Schwartz¹, Erin Meier¹; ¹Northeastern University

Metaphors are phrases frequently used in daily conversation but the neural underpinnings of metaphor remain relatively unknown, with debate revolving around the extent to which additional brain regions (such as regions in the multiple demand network or regions in the right hemisphere) are recruited to support processing of metaphors. We have previously analyzed the neural correlates (via functional near infrared spectroscopy) of novel and familiar metaphors as compared to paired literal phrases with the same base word (e.g., “The only noise was a flush; His memoirs were a toilet flush”) but we have yet to explore how other features of the stimuli contribute to processing difficulty. In this work we seek feedback for extending analyses of neuroimaging to other features that contribute to metaphor difficulty. We analyzed behavioral responses to three additional linguistic features of the phrases (1) sensory modalities, 2) syntactic structure, and 3) semantic diversity of the base term, along with three variables of individual differences (2) executive function and (1) vocabulary knowledge. Twenty-eight healthy individuals (n = 14 female; M age = 23.1 ± 3.1 years) participated. In a multi-step linear regression, individual differences were consistently predictive of reaction time and metacognitive awareness, but vocabulary knowledge and syntactic structures were only predictive of slower reaction times, not metacognitive awareness, where sensory modality made no difference to either metacognitive judgments or reaction times. Our findings suggest that a number of features contribute to metaphor difficulty and may recruit different regions of the brain during processing.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Development & aging