Examining The Automaticity Of Activation Of The Spatial Representation Of Power

Metaphor has always been as a literary figures of speech.Conceptual metaphor theory(CMT)put forward by Lakoff and Johnson however sees it differently.CMT suggest that metaphor is a way thorough which we communicate and understand abstract concepts by transfer the meaning and structure of sauce domain to target domain.Some researchers indicate that concrete concepts are activated automatically when people process abstract concepts.In contrast,some other studies showed that the activation of metaphoric associations did not occur automatically.It has limits and depends on task context.The present study try to test the limits of activation automaticity and find the boundary conditions of this activation from two aspects:sauce concept vertical space and target concept power.On the basis of Schubert(2005)experiment 2,our first experiment added unrelated group label pairs that differ in power while have no direct power relations,such as princess—clerk.This was mean to investigate the activation of metaphorical representation whether is constrained to direct power relation or extends to a more general hierarchical relation.The results showed that metaphorical representation was activated in both Schubert(2005)condition and unrelated group labels condition.Experiment 2 adopted relatedness judgement task to further investigate the modulation of metaphorical congruency effect for power words.Subjects don’t need to compare the power of two group labels in this task.Space—power congruency was found with related group label pairs,but disappeared with unrelated group pairs.Experiment 1 and 2 explored the boundary condition of metaphorical representation from a perspective of power relation.Combine the results of two experiments,we concluded that understand the power relation between two words is necessary for the activation of metaphorical representation.Experiment 3 was similar to experiment 1,with the exception that word pairswas presented diagonally on the screen instead of vertical up and down.Thus horizontal difference would be an interference information for metaphorical representation to retrieve vertical clues.It turned out this experimental operation had no impact on the activation of metaphorical representation.With stimuli and presentation mode identical to experiment 3,experiment 4 asked subjects to respond to the horizontal position of the target words.We changed the task to orient subject’s attention to horizontal dimension.But still metaphorical representation was activated.Experiment 3 and 4 indicate that for the activation of metaphorical representation,retrieving special clues from perceptual information is highly automatic.