The effect of surface similarities on the retrieval of analogous daily-life events.

Against the typical results of laboratory studies, it has been suggested that retrieving distant analogs from autobiographical memory would be relatively easy, since we frequently encode daily-life events in terms of overlearned relational categories that allow for a uniform abstract encoding. In each of two experiments, we formed two groups of participants who, as determined by a questionnaire presented during a first session, had experienced an event corresponding to a schema-governed category (Experiment 1) or to a system of schema-governed categories (Experiment 2). While the episodes reported by one of the groups belonged to the same domain as the target analog to be presented during the second session, those of the other group belonged to a different domain. During a temporally and contextually separated session, the experimenters presented both groups with a target analog belonging to the schema-governed category for which participants had reported a base analog. Participants had to retrieve an autobiographical episode that they considered analogous to the situation presented by the experimenter. From those analogs reported in the first phase, those pertaining to the same domain of the target were more retrieved than those pertaining to a different domain. Results showed that analogical retrieval is driven largely by surface similarities, even when base and target analogs have been encoded in terms of the same schema-governed category.

The Understanding of Visual Metaphors by the Congenitally Blind.

Results from a narrow set of empirical studies suggest that blind individuals' comprehension of metaphorical expressions does not differ from that of sighted participants. However, prominent accounts of metaphor comprehension yield different predictions about the blind's ability to comprehend visual metaphors. While conceptual metaphor theory leads to predicting that blind individuals should lag behind their sighted peers in making sense of this particular kind of utterances, from traditional accounts of analogical reasoning it follows that blind individuals' ability to comprehend the literal meaning of visual concepts might be sufficient to support their metaphorical application. In Experiment 1, 20 sighted and 20 congenitally blind participants were asked to select the most appropriate meaning for visual, grasping and filler metaphorical expressions. Results failed to reveal group differences for any type of metaphorical expressions. In order to implement a more stringent test of blind individuals' ability to understand visual metaphors, in Experiment 2 blind and sighted participants were presented with very novel figurative expressions, as indicated by low or no occurrence in the "Google" corpus. In line with the results of Experiment 1, blind participants' comprehension of visual metaphors was both high in absolute terms and comparable to that of sighted participants. We advance some speculations about the mechanisms by which blind individuals comprehend visual metaphors and we discuss the implications of these results for current theories of metaphor.