Metaphor and the free recall of technical text

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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of metaphors on the free recall of technical text. More information was remembered when the context did not contain metaphors and when the target paragraph was more important in the hierarchy of the passage. When the surrounding context contained no metaphors, recall of literal target information varied as a function of its importance in the passage structure. However, recall of the metaphoric target information did not change as a function of its position in the passage structure. Participants who read metaphoric target paragraphs often recalled the information in paraphrase form and sometimes recalled the metaphor without being able to integrate it into the rest of the paragraph. Data from this study suggest that metaphors in text are processed differently from literal language. A two‐step process of solving the metaphor in its context and storing the information in a nonmetaphoric representation equivalent to the representation of a corresponding paraphrase is consistent with the findings of this study.

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