Forgetting the Literal: The Role of Inhibition in Metaphor Comprehension

In order to comprehend figurative language does literal information need to be inhibited? Previous research using sentence-verification paradigms has found evidence for the inhibition of literal associates after reading metaphorical sentences; however it is problematic to infer inhibition from this research. Moreover, previous work has not distinguished between familiar and novel metaphor processing. In three preliminary experiments using a novel metaphor-induced-literal-forgetting paradigm, participants initially learned word pairs where the cues were potential metaphoric vehicles and the targets were literal associates (e.g., SHARK- swim). Then, participants read half the vehicles as part of metaphorical sentences which they interpreted (The lawyer for the defense is a shark). Subsequent forgetting of the literal associates was greater when vehicles had appeared in metaphorical sentences (Experiment 1), was observed for interpreting both familiar and novel metaphors (Experiment 2), and was observed for only novel metaphors when instructed to simply read the metaphors without interpreting them (Experiment 3). These results suggest that forgetting occurs as a function of the amount of effort that a reader needs to put into interpreting metaphoric phrases by inhibiting alternative meanings during the resolution process, as these demands are greater for novel expressions. Experiments 4 and 5attempted a strong test of this hypothesis by using “impossible” metaphors which subjects are unlikely to resolve with a viable interpretation within a short time frame. While the forgetting effect was weaker in these experiments, some evidence for forgetting associated with processing impossible metaphors was observed. Potential limitations and suggestions for future work are discussed.