The effects of creativity and crystallized intelligence on metaphor comprehension

Journal: Region - Educational Research and Reviews DOI: 10.32629/rerr.v5i5.1519

Yue CHEN

Dalian University of Technology

Abstract

The nature of the cognitive processes involved in metaphor comprehension has spurred ongoing debate, particularly concerning the relative contributions of general analogy versus language-specific categorization. One prominent proposal posits that metaphor comprehension necessitates analogical reasoning to establish a relationship between the target and the source. An alternative perspective posits that metaphors can be interpreted as categorization statements. This paper adopts an individual-differences approach to probe metaphor comprehension, encompassing both literary and non-literary metaphors. The research conducted a metaphor-comprehension study involving college students, measuring both creativity (using the Chinese Remote Association Test) and crystallized verbal intelligence (using the verbal subscale of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale). The research findings revealed distinct predictive relationships between each measure and metaphor comprehension. Specifically, it had been observed that crystallized intelligence significantly influences comprehension across a wide spectrum of metaphor types, encompassing both literary and non-literary examples. Conversely, individual differences in creativity predominantly impact the comprehension of more cognitively intricate metaphors, notably those originating from literary sources.

Keywords

creativity; crystallized intelligence; metaphor comprehension

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