PERCEPTUAL VS CONCEPTUAL SIMILARITIES AND CREATION OF NEW FEATURES IN VISUAL METAPHORS (original) (raw)

A number of empirical studies have demonstrated that certain metaphors can create new conceptual similarities between the source and the target. However, the mechanism of similarity creation has not been explained or modelled satisfactorily. In this paper, we present some empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis for visual metaphors and show how similarity judgements are different from metaphor process. We focus on visual metaphors because here the images corresponding to the source and the target are objectively present. Moreover, we use an algorithmic approach to establish perceptual similarity by using an image-based search system that determines similarity based on low-level perceptual features like colour, shape, texture, etc. Results of this study shows a difference in similarity process and metaphor process, the number of newly created conceptual features also correlated strongly with the perceptual similarity between the pairs of images. Finally, an analysis of the eye-movement data shows that the perceptually similar regions of the images get increased attention during metaphorical interpretation.