conceptual abilities and pictorial metaphors of abstract concepts (Концептуальные...
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Conceptual abilities and pictorial metaphors
of abstract concepts (Концептуальные способности и создание рисованных
метафор для абстрактных понятий)
Yanina Ledovaya, Ksenia Mikhalchenko Department of Psychology, Saint Petersburg State University,
Russia 23—27 June, 2014
Kaliningrad THE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Conceptual abilities « Концептуальные способности – это психические свойства, имеющие отношение к продуктивности процессов концептуализации и обеспечивающие возможность порождения некоторых новых ментальных содержаний, не представленных в актуальных внешних обстоятельствах и отсутствующих в усвоенных индивидуальных знаниях »
Холодная М.А. Психология понятийного мышления: От концептуальных структур к понятийным способностям, 2012, с.225, с.238
Эмпирические критерии концептуальных способностей (Empirical criteria for conceptual abilities)
1) выявление имплицитных (скрытых, неочевидных) признаков, связей, закономерностей;
2) конструирование новых представлений и идей, включая концептуальные метафоры;
3) интерпретации, в том числе варьирующие и альтернативные;
4) понимающее и прогнозирующее чтение; 5) создание авторских текстов (ментальных нарративов разной степени сложности).
Холодная М.А. Психология понятийного мышления: От концептуальных структур к понятийным способностям, 2012, с.238
Холодная М.А. Психология понятийного мышления: От концептуальных структур к понятийным способностям, 2012, с.239
Conceptual metaphor mechanism “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature“ “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”
Argument (target domain)
War (source domain)
Lakoff G., Johnson M. Metaphors we live by, 1980, p. 4, p.6.
Conceptual metaphor “The idea that metaphors are nothing but linguistic expressions—a mere matter of words—is such a common fallacy that it has kept many readers from even entertaining the idea that we think metaphorically. The fallacy is that metaphor is only about the ways we talk and not about conceptualization and reasoning…” “…The nature of metaphor also is not a matter of definition; it is a question of the nature of cognition…”
Lakoff G., Johnson M. Metaphors we live by, 1980, p. 245-246
Types of metaphors by G.Lakoff: Orientational Metaphors
Example: HAPPY IS UP • The fact that the concept HAPPY is
oriented UP leads to English expressions like "I'm feeling up today”
Organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another. Most of them have to do with spatial orientation: up-down, in-out, front- back, on-off, deep-shallow, central-peripheral.
Ontological Metaphors Example: INFLATION IS AN ENTITY • We need to combat inflation. • Inflation is hacking us into a corner.
Our experiences with physical objects (especially our own bodies) provide the basis for an extraordinarily wide variety of ontological metaphors, that is, ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances.
Structural Metaphors Example: ARGUMENT IS WAR • He attacked every weak point in my
argument. • His criticisms were right on target.
Allow us, in addition, to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another.
Lakoff G., Johnson M. Metaphors we live by, 1980
What is being studied
! Metaphor in cognitive linguistics and philosophy (G.Lakoff, M.Turner, R.W. Gibbs)
! Metaphor in experimental social psychological studies (L.Boroditsky, P.Thibodeau, D. Casasanto)
! Metaphor and creativity (P.Silvia, M.Avanesyan) ! Mental representations and mental imagery, but not
metaphor (A.Paivio, S.Kosslyn) ! Conceptual metaphors and embodied cognition: EEG
coherence (C.Lachaud) ! Mental representations and conceptual thinking,
but not metaphor (M.Kholodnaya)
What is being studied
Conceptual metaphor
Mental representati
on
Intelligence (conceptual
thinking)
Creativity
Linguistics
Social-Psychological studies
? ?
Aims of the study
1. To find out the relations between verbal and nonverbal intelligence (conceptual and categorical (?) structures) and the accuracy of metaphorical representations of psychological concepts in students In other words, whether verbal or nonverbal intelligence is more important in generating metaphors for abstract concepts 2. To test the influence of verbalization of the formal definition of a psychological concept on the quality of metaphorical representation.
Sample
40 students of the Department of Psychology aged 16-25 yrs (M=19,9), 13 males, 27 females 1st year – 15 Ss 4th year – 25 Ss
Methods
1) to create and to draw metaphors for 3 psychological concepts – "insight", "introversion", "sensory deprivation”
2) to give the verbal definitions to these terms 3) to draw new metaphors 4) Raven’s SPM 5) “Similarities”, WAIS
*pilot stage for concepts selection
Qualitative analysis of pictured metaphors 1. Content accuracy, “meaningfulness”, C 0 pts–unsuccessful: no picture, a nonsense picture, a picture distorting the sense 1 pt–partly successful: depicting partly distorted content of a concept, insufficient
sense in a picture 2 pts–successful: pictures that depict the sense of a concepts in adequate and
sufficient way 2. Metaphoricity, M 0 pts–unsuccessful: no picture, a pure illustration, a too concrete case irrelevant to
the concept 1 pt–partly successful: an not very successful attempt to create a metaphor, too
semantically close to the source domain 2 pts–successful: a metaphorical picture where the essential characteristics of a
source domain are projected to a semantically far target domain with similar essential characteristics
The idea of qualitative and quantitative analyses of definitions, as well as the indicator
of "the meaningfulness of an image"–were both borrowed from M. Kholodnaya's method "The integrated conceptual structures", in a slightly modified way.
Aims of the study
1. To find out the relations between verbal and nonverbal intelligence (conceptual and categorical (?) structures) and the accuracy of metaphorical representations of psychological concepts in students In other words, whether verbal or nonverbal intelligence is more important in generating metaphors for abstract concepts 2. To test the influence of verbalization of the formal definition of a psychological concept on the quality of metaphorical representation.
Results
• no significant differences in 7 of 9 indicators (U Mann-Whitney test) gave
us the reason to consider students from 1st and 4th years together, • students 1st and 4th years in the three groups are presented uniformly.
Content accuracy
№ 3 hi №2 med № 1 low
Metaphoricity
№ 3 hi
№2 med № 1 low
0-12 0-12
Results ANOVA (3 groups (hi, med, lo) on Content accuracy)
ANOVA (3 groups (hi, med, lo) on Metaphoricity)
р р
Similarities 0,006 Similarities - (Levene's = 0,036)
Raven SPM 0,108 Raven SPM 0,678
Definition 0,036 Definition 0,838
Results By means of one-way ANOVA test we showed the relationship between the verbal intelligence and the accuracy of formal verbal representation (definition) with the “content accuracy” (ANOVA, p=0,006, p=0,036).
20,94
23,11
22,53
19,5
20
20,5
21
21,5
22
22,5
23
23,5
low med hi
54 55,67 54,4
20
30
40
50
60
low med hi
3,38 3,33
3,67
3,1 3,2 3,3 3,4 3,5 3,6 3,7
low med hi
Similarities
Raven SPM Definition
Results
Wilcoxon's crit. showed the distinctions in the quality of the “content accuracy” before and after the formal definition verbalization (p=0,032): BEFORE was better than AFTER
Conclusions 1. The main contribution to the metaphor content accuracy is made by verbal intelligence (categorical abilities). 2. Nonverbal intelligence (G, measured by Raven SPM) doesn't affect neither metaphor content accuracy nor the accuracy of a definition. 3. "Metaphoricity" remains an "elusive" indicator: we didn't find its analogues measured by verbal and nonverbal tests we used (categorical and conceptual abilities).
Critics and future considerations
! sample size! ! methods? ! G or verbal and nonverbal intelligence, or conceptual/categorical abilities? ! to add creativity evaluation? ! qualitative stage? ! concepts themselves?
Supported by Saint Petersburg State University Research № 8.38.191.2011 “Information and Energetic issues in Cognitive Activity” Research №8.38.303.2014 “Psychophysiological correlates of mental spaces emerging while various cognitive tasks solving”
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