The Weight Metaphor Of Degree Category And Its Influence On Cognition

Embodied cognition holds that concept representation is based on motion perception. Metaphor is an important way to express an abstract concept and the metaphorical language often have psychological connotations. Previous research identified that the sense of weight will bring overestimate behaviors. In many language, weight is often used to express the degree category. In view of this, we suppose that the metaphorical language may also exist in the natural psychological level. Based on the conclusion of previous studies this article is divided into two parts to investigate the weight metaphor of degree category and its influence on people’s cognition. Study 1(Experiments 1, 2) used balance(representing weight) and adverbs of degree(degree category basic form in Chinese) to explore the relationship between weight and degree category in priming task. Study 2(Experiment 3) used the retrieval of autobiographical memories to explore whether weight will affect the individual’s cognitive through the mediation of the weight metaphor of degree category.Experiment 1 found that when the position of the pointer of balance(something heavy) was consistent with high degree adverbs, the participants’ reaction time was the shortest, the correct rate was the highest, which indicates that the process of degree adverbs can be primed effectively by weight. In Experiment 2, similar design was constructed to exclude the influence of direction concept. In Experiment 3,we found that the weight metaphor of degree category may cause overestimate behavior.The results suggest that degree category is embodied in weight in Chinese. Human cognition can be influenced by the weight metaphor of degree category.