PERCEPTUAL VS CONCEPTUAL SIMILARITIES AND CREATION OF NEW FEATURES IN VISUAL METAPHORS (original) (raw)
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An empirical study on the role of perceptual similarity in visual metaphors and creativity
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Role of perceptual similarity in comprehending visual metaphors: Evidences from eye-movement study
Visual metaphors are one of the non-verbal manifestations of conceptual metaphors in which concepts are presented as images. In the present study we did an eye movement analysis of participants who were asked to find a suitable source for a target. Results showed that perceptual similarity between source and target plays an important role in anchoring the generation of conceptual association between them.
In two eye movement studies we try 1) to shed some light on the issue of identification of target and source in a visual metaphor and 2) try to explore the role of perceptual similarity in metaphor interpretation. In first experiment we found that viewer must notice the incongruity in order to come up with a metaphorical interpretation when he is presented with a visual metaphor (where only one object is depicted). We also show, using eye movement data, that when viewers fixate on the incongruous object they identify the target of metaphor correctly and if they do not focus on incongruous object, the target is identified erroneously. In second experiment we hypothesize that perceptual similarity plays a key role in forming a metaphorical interpretation. we found that as far as pictorial similes are concerned, attention must be focused on the perceptual similarities between the two images in order for a viewer to come up with a metaphorical interpretation. Moreover, the attention is shared between the perceptually similar regions of the two images in a symmetric way, suggesting that they are being compared during metaphorical interpretation.
Perceptual Similarity in Visual Metaphor Processing
In visual metaphor processing, one object, the target, is compared to and understood in terms of another object, the source. Several studies suggest that perceptual similarity between two objects enhances a conceptual link between the two. However, little is known about how perceptual features contribute to the establishment of this link. In the present experiment we investigated the processing of the four possible combinations of conceptually and perceptually similar picture pairs using a same-different task. In order to determine whether particular processes are bound to a particular time range, we manipulated the delay between the two successively presented pictures. We expected perceptual processing effects at a short delay and conceptual processing effects at a longer delay. We did not find evidence for this expectation. However, the results did show that (i) it took participants longer to give a ‘different’ response if two objects shared perceptual features than when they did ...
A computational model for visual metaphor
Coming up with new and creative advertisements is a sophisticated task for humans, because creativity requires breaking conventional associations to create new juxtaposition of familiar objects. Using objects in an uncommon context attracts the viewer's attention and is an effective way to communicate a message in advertisements. Perceptual similarity seems to be a major source for creativity in the domain of visual metaphors, e.g. replacing objects by perceptually similar, but conceptually different objects is a technique to create new and unconventional interpretations. In this paper, we analyze the role of perceptual similarity in advertisements and propose an extension of Heuristic-Driven Theory Projection, a computational theory for analogy making that can be used to automatically compute interpretations of visual metaphors.
The semantic similarity that characterizes two terms aligned in a metaphor is here analysed through a corpus-based distributional semantic space. We compare and contrast two samples of metaphors, representative of visual and linguistic modality of expressions respectively. Popular theories of metaphor claim that metaphors transcend their modality to influence conceptual structures, thus suggesting that different modalities of expression would typically express the same conceptual metaphors. However, we show substantial differences in the degree of similarity captured by the distributional semantic space with regard to the modality of expression (higher similarity for linguistic metaphors than for visual ones). We argue that this is due to two possible variables: Conventionality (linguistic metaphors are typically conventional, while visual are not) and Complexity (visual metaphors have modality-specific inner complexities that penalize the degree of similarity between metaphor terms captured by a language-based model). Finally, we compare the similarity scores of our original formulations with those obtained from different possible verbalizations of the same metaphors (acquired by replacing the metaphor terms with their semantic neighbours). We show that while this operation does not affect the average similarity between metaphor terms for visual metaphors, the similarity changes significantly in linguistic metaphors. These results are discussed here.
GENERAL IMAGE UNDERSTANDING IN VISUAL METAPHOR IDENTIFICATION
Research on visual metaphor has rapidly developed in the wake of verbal metaphor research, focusing on the development of taxonomies for visual metaphors and the analysis of the use of visual metaphor in specialized genres. In these studies visual metaphor identification seems to be quite straightforward. However, a reliable procedure for identifying visual metaphor in all sorts of contexts still needs to be developed. The first step of such procedure is concerned with the acquisition of a general understanding of an image In this article we explore the issues that analysts face when they look at the image and establish its general meaning. Resumen: Los estudios sobre metáfora visual se han sucedido a partir de la investigación en metáfora verbal, y se han centrado en el desarrollo de taxonomías de metáforas visuales y el análisis del uso de la metáfora visual en géneros concretos. En estos estudios la identificación de metáforas visuales parece una tarea sencilla. Sin embargo, estimamos necesario diseñar un método fiable que permita identificar metáforas visuales en todo tipo de contextos. El primer paso consiste en adquirir una comprensión global de la imagen. En este artículo abordamos las cuestiones que se plantean los analistas al observar una imagen y determinar su significado general Palabras clave: metáfora visual, identificación de metáforas, descripción de la imagen, significado de la imagen, comprensión de la imagen.
In this study two modalities of expression (verbal and visual) are compared and contrasted, in relation to their ability and their limitations to construct and express metaphors. A representative set of visual metaphors and a representative set of linguistic metaphors are here compared, and the semantic similarity between metaphor terms is modeled within the two sets. Such similarity is operationalized in terms of semantic features produced by informants in a property generation task (e.g. McRae et al., 2005). Semantic features provide insights into conceptual content, and play a role in deep conceptual processing, as opposed to shallow linguistic processing. Thus, semantic features appear to be useful for modelling metaphor comprehension, assuming that metaphors are matters of thought rather than simple figures of speech (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). The question tackled in this paper is whether semantic features can account for the similarity between metaphor terms of both visual and verbal metaphors. For this purpose, a database of semantic features was collected and then used to analyse 50 visual metaphors and 50 verbal metaphors. It was found that the amount of semantic features shared between metaphor terms is predicted by the modality of expression of the metaphor: the terms compared in visual metaphors share semantic features, while the terms compared in verbal metaphors do not. This suggests that the two modalities of expression afford different ways to construct and express metaphors.
The identification of target and source in pictorial metaphors
Journal of Pragmatics, 2002
Lakoff and Johnson’s dictum that “metaphor is primarily a matter of thought and action and only derivatively a matter of language” (1980: 153) has given rise to numerous studies investigating how metaphors’ verbal manifestations relate to their cognitive origins. Curiously, little attention has hitherto been paid to a logical extension of this adage, namely the examination of non-verbal metaphor, for instance pictorial metaphor. In this article, Carroll’s (1994, 1996) proposals concerning the nature and identifiability of pictorial metaphors are discussed in terms of the model developed by Forceville (1996). Two theses inherent in Carroll’s approach are investigated and rejected: (1) that most prototypical pictorial metaphors, unlike verbal ones, allow a reversibility of their respective targets and sources; and (2) that prototypical pictorial metaphors are ‘homospatially noncompossible’, that is, that they are visual hybrids. The article ends by making suggestions concerning the investigation of cinematic metaphors in line with Forceville (1996). reserved.