Memory for Metaphor.

A study was designed to test the hypothesis that memory for metaphor was primarily a function of the structure of the metaphor itself. Eighty undergraduate students rated the quality of subsets of 80 metaphors and later freely recalled them, while another 40 students simply read metaphors in their extended contexts and later received a surprise cued recall test. Student ratings of metaphoric quality had only a slight relationship to the frequency with which they recalled those metaphors. There was no relationship between the 80 student ratings of quality and the cued recall frequencies from the other 40 students who merely read the same metaphors. Ratings of conceptual similarity were only minimally related to free recall from students who rated the quality of metaphors in extended context. The metaphors with presumably the poorest general comprehension were not consistently the most poorly recalled, nor were the best understood metaphors the most frequently recalled ones. The tenors of the metaphors were recalled significantly more often than vehicles in the cued recall measures. These results indicate that memory for metaphor is related to its structure but not to its quality, conceptual similarity, or comprehensibility. That is, metaphoric terms (vehicles) are more effective in reminding people of things that are likened to them (tenors) than vice versa, suggesting that vehicles provide the schema to which tenors are assimilated. (RL)