The Role Of Inhibition Mechanism In Metaphor Comprehension

Four experiments were carried out to investigate the inhibition mechanism in metaphor comprehension. 2x2 within-subjects design, sensibility judgment task and response time index were used. In experiment land 2, when the interval between response to the priming sentence and presentation of the property sentence is 0ms, both the vehicle's properties relevant to figurative meaning and the target's properties relevant to figurative meaning were activated, both the vehicle's properties irrelevant to figurative meaning and the target's properties irrelevant to figurative meaning were inhibited. In experiment 3 and 4, when the interval between response to the priming sentence and presentation of the property sentence is 450ms, both the vehicle's properties relevant to figurative meaning and the target's properties relevant to figurative meaning were still activated, while both the vehicle's properties irrelevant to figurative meaning and the target's properties irrelevant to figurative meaning were not inhibited. The results showed: the inhibition mechanism that underlie literal language comprehension is also crucial for metaphor comprehension, but it is fragile and will decay rapidly after a metaphor is understood. As attributive categorization theory predicts, the vehicle of a metaphor stands for the ad hoc category to which the topic can belong, only properties relevant to the category are selected while others are not selected.