1 Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental and Information Studies, Musashi Institute of Technology2 Associate Professor, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Simulation Semantics Based on the Subdivision of the Figures of Speech

Yumiko Shimizu1, Hiroyuki Akama2

研究論文 1-8

AbstractProperty verification is one of the tasks intended for empirical examinations of the format of

conceptual representations. In this task, participants evaluate as fast as possible whether the targetproperties are true or not for the concepts which are presented as stimuli. It has been suggestedthat for the responses to this task, they employ two strategies that simulation semantics has pro-posed as methods of meaning processing : word association and perceptual simulation. The aimof this study is to elucidate the working range of these two strategies that are employed for prop-erty verification. With the assumption that the associative strength between concepts and proper-ties depends on the relational category between these two, we hypothesized that the relationalcategory had its specific degree of associativeness, which would be provided by the relational rec-ognition mechanisms. We verified this hypothesis by two property verification tasks by changingvariable conditions. As a result, it is found that “synecdoche” and “metonymy”, two fundamentaltypes of figures of speech, can be treated as specific recognition mechanisms for which word as-sociation and perceptual simulation are suitable in meaning processing.

1. IntroductionWhat are the conceptual representations? A classic debate in cognitive science has concerned

the format in which information is stored and manipulated in the human brain. The historicallyprevalent theory of knowledge representation has been based upon the amodal or propositionalsymbol system (Fodor, 1975 ; Kintsch, 1998, ; Newell & Simon, 1972 ; Pylyshyn, 1981, 1984).In its approach, it is assumed that linguistic feature lists represent concepts. A feature list containslinguistic descriptions of the characteristics associated with the members in a category. Recently,however, theorists have presented a potentially viable alternative to the amodal or propositionalsymbol in the form of perceptual one (Barsalou, 1999a, 1999b). According to the perceptual sym-bol systems, people process concepts by simulating their referents perceptually.

Numerous empirical studies have been intensively carried out to examine the contrastive pre-dictions arising from the amodal and perceptual symbol systems (Kosslyn & Thompson, 2000 ;Kan et al., 2003 ; Solomon & Barsalou, 2004). In particular, Kan et al. (2003) used fMRI (func-tional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) to collect the participants’ activation data on the regions ofthe visual association cortex during the performance of the property verification task. They pre-dicted that the activity in the region (the left fusiform gyrus, which has been associated with men-

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tal imagery) during property verification would support the assertion that semantic knowledge isindeed grounded in the perceptual system. Activation of the left fusiform gyrus only occurred un-der “the conditions hypothesized to require conceptual knowledge”. These conditions correspondto the circumstances under which lexical co-occurrence and associative strength between conceptsand properties are not so much effective in performing the property verification task.

This study aims to clarify the working range of the strategies employed in the property verifi-cation task. According to Kan et al. (2003), perceptual simulation that would activate the left fusi-form gyrus did not occur in true/false evaluation when the associative strength between conceptsand properties was relevant to the task. In other words, the degree of associative strength can beconsidered to be inversed to the range of perceptual scan in the property verification task. Clarify-ing that “relational categories between concepts and properties” would be one of the critical fac-tors in semantic processing, Shimizu and Akama (2006) assumed that the associative strength be-tween concepts and properties would vary throughout these relational categories and that thestrategies for the property verification task would be dependent on this strength. That is to say, therelational category has its specific degree of associativeness, which would be provided by the rela-tional recognition mechanisms. In this study, we confirm this claim in two property verificationtasks by changing variable conditions.

1.1 Property GenerationWu & Barsalou (2004) performed a property generation task on several objects and discussed

the strategies used by the participants to generate the properties. For instance, when a participantis asked to generate the property of “lawn,” he can easily come up with its superordinate “plant.”The participant also may recall a variety of images concerning “lawn” from his experience of thepast and make a list of the properties of a lawn, such as “green,” “soft,” or “leaves,” by scanningthe images related to “lawn”. These two strategies used in generating the properties were called“word association” and “perceptual simulation,” respectively by Barsalou (1999b).

Word association is a strategy to show a strong semantic relation between two words, whichusually builds a stereotypical syntax. For instance, in Japanese, “superordinate” (The human is ananimal) and “time” (“The dawn is for spring” or “In spring, it is the dawn that is most beautiful”)are representatives of such a word association game.

Perceptual simulation is a strategy that generates images and that scans them. Wu & Barsalou(2004) said that even though participants were asked explicitly to produce object properties, theyshould also produce properties of the background situations that arose implicitly while simulatingobjects. When asked to generate properties of lawn, for example, participants may simulate a lawnin a back yard or in a park, not just an isolated patch.

1.2 Property VerificationProperty verification is a recognition-oriented and temporally constrained task. On each trial,

participants receive a word for a concept followed by a word for a property. Participants thenspecify whether the property is true of the concept as fast as they can. For example, participantsmight receive “lawn” then “roots” and respond ‘True’ ; or they might receive “lawn” then“wheels” and respond ‘False’.

Solomon and Barsalou (2004) conducted a property verification task in two groups of imageryparticipants and neutral participants. The imagery participants were instructed to form an image ofeach concept and to look for the property in it. If they found the property, they were to respond

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Figure 1. Reaction Time ofSubdivision of the Figure of Speech (ms)

true. The neutral participants received no explicit instructions about strategies for performing thetask. True properties were limited to the physical parts of the objects ; two conditions were set forfalse properties. These conditions for false trials were prescribed such that the items were con-structed with or without associations between concepts and properties. When false trials were un-der the associated conditions, the results showed that imagery participants were significantlyslower in reaction times than neutral participants. It was interpreted that imagery participants con-structed richer simulations. On the other hand, in the unassociated conditions, imagery participantsdid not differ from neutral participants. Both for imagery participants and neutral participants, theassociated false properties slowed reaction times relative to unassociated false properties. Solomonand Barsalou (2004) thought that participants adopted a faster word association strategy whenfalse trials were unassociated. In all conditions, when the word association strategy was available,participants adopted it. When the word association strategy was deterred, perceptual stimulationwas used. These two strategies were recognized even in neutral participants under the unassociatedcondition in which perceptual processing was most unlikely to occur. That is, these participantsprimarily used word association, but they increasingly constructed simulations as the associativestrength was less diagnostic for correct responses. The strategies adopted by participants changestep-by-step in a property verification task, and as the associations between concepts and proper-ties of true trials are stronger word association is adopted, and as the association is weaker per-ceptual simulation is more frequently used.

1.3 Relational categories between pictures and propertiesShimizu and Akama (2006) clarified that using pictures as stimuli, the reaction time required

for verifying whether property was true for the concept of the picture was dependent on the rela-tionship between the picture and the property. They used properties belonging to seven relationalcategories : “superordinate,” “time,” “impression,” “action,” “internal component,” “place,” and“metaphor” (e.g., superordinate : bed→furniture, time : snowman→winter, impression : fire→hot,action : pencil→write, internal component : cup→coffee, location : sailboat→sea,metaphor : crown→first prize).

When measuring how long it takes to verify the properties, they found that there was signifi-cant difference in reaction times among three meta-semantic types that were more inclusive thanthese seven semantics categories (Figure 1). From this result, we supposed that associativestrength between the concepts and properties should be dependent on their relational categories,

and differences of their relational recognitionmechanisms induce selection of strategies inproperty verification.

The creation of these three meta-semantictypes was motivated with the well-known clas-sification of the figures of speech (synecdoche,metonymy and metaphor). It is widely recog-nized that there has been a long traditionknown with the name of Saussure, Jakobsonand Peirce to see rhetoric and figures ofspeech in the most general semantic categori-zation working in the ordinary language. Forexample, in the theory of two axes applied to

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all systems of language, Jakobson tried to identify the relations of resemblance and contiguitywith metaphor and metonymy, respectively (Jakobson & Halle, 1956).

The figure of speech has been considered as a term that is used instead of the other to gener-ate some semantic effects. “Synecdoche” (e.g., cherry blossoms as the most symbolic flower),which is one of three meta-semantic types, efficiently represents one category by employing theprototype that expressed the category most properly. In seven relational categories between pic-tures and properties, “superordinate” and “time” belong to this type. This is the fastest in reactiontimes of the three meta-semantic types (Fig1.). Secondly, “metonymy” (e.g., “Red Hood” repre-senting the girl who wears it) is schematically represented by the contiguity of two objects ofwhich one is put into a surface, slot or range of the other. “Impression”, “action”, “internal com-ponent”, and “place” in the relational categories can be then bound together and labeled by me-tonymy. The last of the three meta-semantic types “metaphor” (e.g., men are wolves) is basedupon the comparison of two resembling objects and its instances showed the largest latency of all.It corresponds to “metaphor” in the relational category. It is expected that time to process themeaning of metaphor is greatly influenced by factors other than the strategy taken for propertyverification. Thus to follow up this matter would carry us too far away from the purpose of thisresearch.

In this study, focusing on synecdoche and metonymy, we elucidated the difference betweentheir “relational recognition mechanisms” and the relationship of strategies for property verifica-tion, and then clarified the working range of each strategy. For this purpose, we carried out ex-periments focusing on perceptual variables. Following Shimizu and Akama (2006), we used pic-tures as stimuli. In Experiment 1, two pictures that were different in the degree of similarity to theobject were employed as stimuli for property verification. The results were predicted from the per-ceptual and amodal points of view, and these explanations were examined. In Experiment 2, priorto measurement of the time taken to verify the properties, the identification by a word describinga picture stimulus was carried out.

2. Experiment1Experiment 1 is to measure the time taken to verify the properties having three kinds of rela-

tions (synecdoche, metonymy and metaphor). Two kinds of pictures of varying similarity with theobject of the picture were shown to the participants as stimuli.

On the basis of degree of similarity to the object, picture stimuli were divided into the two :high (realistic version) and low (sketchy version). It means that we used a pair of picture stimulithat both represented a particular object but that were different in complexity or in degree of de-tails. If word association would be employed in synecdoche that has the shortest reaction time inthe three meta-semantic types, it is expected that advantageous version for “recognition of pic-tures” would become shorter in reaction time. If perceptual simulation would be employed in me-tonymy, it can be predicted that the reaction time would become shorter in the sketchy versionthan in the realistic version. The reason of this expectation is that the presence of details wouldhelp a subject react faster for the identification of the object (=recognition of the picture) and itsdata processing, but it would delay on the other hand the completion of scanning to get the visualand situational information of the object.

Solomon and Barsalou (2004) supposed that strategies taken by participants in property verifi-cation could shift gradually according to the conditions. They concluded that as the association

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between the concepts and properties of true trials became stronger, word association strategy wasadopted and time required for judgment became shorter, and as the association was weaker, de-pendence on perceptual simulation became greater, and time required for judgment became longer.As mentioned above, concepts and properties in synecdoche have strong associations. Word asso-ciation is a strategy that arises between two words that have strong association to form a well-known, more or less dull expression, and it is likely that word association is often adopted inprocessing of the meaning in synecdoche. Snodgrass & Vanderwart (1980) stated that the picture-naming task required at least two steps : picture recognition and name retrieval ; but that the pic-ture matching task did not necessarily require the latter. Picture matching is a task through whicha subject has to determine as rapidly as possible whether a picture belongs to the superordinateword presented as a target. Even if pictures of flowers and insects, whose names are not known,are presented, the relationship between the superordinate concepts “flowers” and “insects” is eas-ily recognized. Therefore, it is only picture recognition that is a minimally required process. Wordassociation is an unconscious processing (Kan et al., 2003), and once the picture is recognized, itis presumed that the property verification will be performed at the same speed regardless ofwhether the stimulus is the realistic or the sketchy version. Therefore, if word association wouldbe used in synecdoche, reaction time of the version that would be advantageous for picture recog-nition should be shorter.

For metonymy, we predicted that from the viewpoint of perception-based theory, the sketchyversion would be shorter than the realistic one in processing time. When participants are explicitlyasked to image objects, the time for it increases with its complexity (Kosslyn et al., 1983, 1988).It has also been shown when participants verify properties, large properties take longer to simulatethan small ones, thereby increasing the duration of the verification process (Solomon & Barsalou,2004). It is predicted that in perceptual simulation, scanning time will be shorter for the sketchyversion than the realistic one. Particularly for metonymy, perceptual simulation does not set its fo-cus on the object itself but is exercised in situations where the object is situated (Wu & Barsalou,2004). It is expected that the simplified sketchy version allows smooth perceptual simulationwhile scanning details requires burden in the realistic version and reaction would be delayed.

In explanation of property verification from amodal point of view, modality-specific represen-tation is not required or used. Therefore, the amodal symbol system does not predict the influ-ences of two kinds of pictures that have different degree of similarity to the object.

2.1 MethodParticipants : 95 undergraduate students participated in the experiment for pay. All partici-

pants were native Japanese speakers, right-handed and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.Materials : Two sets of 49 pictures were drawn by a student of school of fine arts. One of

them was consisted of pictures drawn realistically according to standardized pictures by Snodgrassand Vanderwart (1980). This set was the realistic version. The other set comprised pictures of thesame concepts with lower similarities to the objects than the realistic version (sketchy version).

We pilot-tested the materials with another 16 participants to select from these sets the criticalitems used as stimuli for the main experiment. When each of these pictures was presented, eachsubject named it and rated on a 5-point Likert scale 1) the faithfulness to its object (1=the leastfaithful, 5=the most faithful) and 2) its relevance to the target word we had created for it with aparticular semantic category (1=the least relevant, 5=the most relevant).

The picture’s name selected for the experiment was the most appropriate one that was given

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by the majority of the participants. The average rates of evaluation on the degree of faithfulnesswere ranged from 3.3 to 4.7 for the pictures of the realistic version. As for the pictures of thesketchy version the rates varied from 1.3 to 3.7 with the difference of 1.3 points from the realisticset in overall average. We selected thirty-nine critical items whose relevance values were between2.67 and 4.95 and the same number of filler items from between 1 and 1.75. The item balancewas considered at the same time by putting the similar number of picture-word pairs in each ofthe semantic categories. These categories had been judged by the experimenters as “synecdoche”,“metonymy” and “metaphor” with 13 instances each.

Table 1. Examples of Materials

Design and Procedure : We grouped 95 participants randomly in two groups (group1 : 47,group2 : 48). Six lists that counterbalanced items and conditions were created, and three of themwere attributed to the group 1 and the other three to the group 2. Each list included a differentone of the six possible versions (2 picture sets×3 semantic categories). The group 1 saw three ofthese six lists (realistic pictures × synecdoche ; sketchy pictures × metonymy ; realistic pictures ×metaphor) and the group 2 saw the remaining three lists (sketchy pictures × synecdoche ; realisticpictures × metonymy ; sketchy pictures × metaphor).

The experiment was run on a Windows XP machine with a 15 inch display using E-Primesoftware program. Each trial begins with the presentation of a picture stimulus (200×200 pixels)for 1000 ms. Then a fixation cross appeared, followed after 250 ms by a target word with the sizeof 36 points. Participants were told that reaction times were being measured and it was crucial forthem to judge as both quickly and accurately as possible whether the picture was relevant to theword. Responses were recorded via the keyboard, using the “F” key for “yes” responses and the“J” key for “no” responses. The right responses to the critical items were all “yes.” After finishing10 practice trials, participants were given the random mixture of the thirty-nine critical and thesame number of filler items. The experiment took nearly 6 minutes to complete.

2.2 Results and DiscussionIncorrect responses (scores for “no” decisions) were removed from the data before the analy-

sis. Data from 11 participants (6 from group 1 and 5 from group 2) were totally discarded be-cause their average reaction times for the overall items were beyond the 2sd upper and lower

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limit. Decision times above or below 2sd for each item were also omitted in order to decrease theeffects of outliers. As the result, there remained 84.4% of the data for group 1 and 89.3% forgroup 2. Mean reaction time is below (Table 2. & Figure 2.).

Table 2. Mean Reaction Time and Mean Standard Deviation in Experiment 1 (ms)

Figure 2. Mean Reaction Time and Mean Standard Deviation in Experiment 1 (ms)

To consider the influences of “subdivision of the figure of speech” and “two picture stimuli”on the reaction time, a generalized linear model for crossover data was applied. As for the reac-tion time, there were significant differences both “subdivision of the figure of speech (synecdoche,metonymy, metaphor)” and “two picture stimuli (realistic version and sketchy version)” [F(2,2772)=169.09, p<.001] [F(1,2772) =4.50, p<.05]. The two-way interaction between “subdivision of thefigure of speech” and “two picture stimuli” was not significant [F(1,2772) =0.05, p=0.825].

With regard to the reaction time in the realistic and sketchy version, the realistic version wasshorter in synecdoche and metaphor, and the sketchy version was shorter for metonymy. In synec-doche, it was predicted that the reaction time would be shorter by advantageous version for pic-ture recognition. Given the fact that the reaction time for the realistic version was shorter, it maybe concluded that greater similarity to the object works better for picture recognition. When per-ceptual simulation was employed for property verification, the sketchy version was expected to beadvantageous. In metonymy, as expected, the sketchy version was shorter in reaction time. Thefact that the reaction time for the realistic version in synecdoche and metaphor is shown to beshorter suggests that word association can act on semantic processing, even for metaphor, inde-pendently of the slowness of the reaction time to the entire metaphor.

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3. Experiment2The manifest identification by uttering a word describing a picture stimulus, alias phonological

encoding task was settled preliminary to measurement of the time taken to verify the properties.Except this initial naming performance, Experiment2 was identical to Experiment1.

According to Snodgrass & Vanderwart (1980), mental image codes generated as the effect ofthe word form of a concept are considered to be relatively simple and schematic. Brandimonte(1992) examined this proposition using the terms of “phonological encoding” and pointed out thatthis mechanism working in STM (short-term memory) might lead to the establishment of aweaker visual representation in LTM (long-term memory) and, therefore, “less veridical” or“poorer” image generation. It is thus supposed that the identification by words would producepoor internal images which interfere with recognition of substantial external pictures. Schooler &Engstler-Schooler (1990) explained this mechanism as in the following way : when verbal re-encoding is carried out on the pictorial representation, a verbally biased representation is gener-ated, and therefore this newly one interferes with the application of the original visual memory.

When word association would be used in synecdoche, picture recognition would be necessaryfor property verification. From Experiment 1, it was confirmed that the realistic version with highsimilarity with the objects was advantageous for picture recognition. Representations producedfrom the realistic version as opposed to the sketchy one would be considerably different frompoor and linguistically biased representations produced by phonological encoding. Therefore, un-der the condition of explicit identification by word, it would be expected that the realistic versionwould be more greatly influenced by picture recognition.

On the other hand, in metonymy, it is hypothesized that perceptual simulation would be em-ployed for property verification mainly. If perceptual simulation is made not only for an object butalso for an external environment or situation that surrounds the object, there should be no need tospend much effort on the question of “What is that object?” Verbal identification can serve only asa hindrance, except in cases where it is totally impossible to identify the object or its environment.In a relationship where semantic processing depends on perceptual simulation, identification byword is predicted to delay the reaction times for both the realistic and sketchy version.

3.1 MethodParticipants : Another 107 graduate and undergraduate students participated for pay. All par-

ticipants were native Japanese speakers, right-handed and with normal or corrected-to-normal vi-sion.

Materials : The same items as in Experiment1 were used.Design and Procedure : We divided 107 participants randomly to two groups (group1 : 54,

group2 : 53). The procedure was approximately identical to that of Experiment1. The only differ-ence was that participants were asked the meanings of the pictures before the measurement of re-action times. We asked them to identify respectively 39 objects represented in a list of picturesand taught them the right names if the responses were other than expected. Two groups of partici-pants were shown 39 pictures, which were the same as the 39 critical items for synecdoche, me-tonymy and metaphor : 13 items each.

3.2 Results and DiscussionThe entire “no” responses were removed before the analysis. 7 participants (5 from group 1

and 2 from group 2) were left out of consideration, following the criteria of 2sd range. Decision

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times above or below 2sd for each item were also omitted. As the result, there remained 86.4% ofthe data for group 1 and 90.9% for group 2. Mean reaction time and standard deviation are as inthe Table3.

Table 3. Mean Reaction Time and Mean Standard Deviation in Experiment 2 (ms)

Mean reaction time in Experiment 2 comparing with Experiment1 respectively three relationalcategories are figure3 to figure 5.

Figure 3. Mean Reaction Time of synecdoche (ms)

Figure 4. Mean Reaction Time of metonymy (ms)

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Figure 5. Mean Reaction Time of metaphor (ms)

Taking into consideration the influence of verbalization task, we conducted a 2(with versuswithout verbal identification) * 2(realistic versus sketchy) ANOVA with respect to each semanticcategory defined by figure of speech.

The results for synecdoche showed that both the main effect of phonological encoding [F(1,2144) =5.51, p<.05] and that of degree of details [F(1,2144) =12.08, p<.01] are significant,while these are restricted by a reliable interaction [F(1,2144) =5.87, p<.05] A simple main effectwas then conducted to see whether there were significant differences within each level of meaningconfirmation and that of picture similarity, respectively. It revealed that the presence of phoneticencoding [F(1,2144)=16.01, p<.01] and the realistic version of picture [F(1,2144)=11.18, p<.01]were significant.

As for metonymy, only the initial meaning check reached significance [F(1,2051) =14.89,p<.01], but it did not significantly interact with similarity features of picture, which did not ap-proach significance as a main effect. Finally we obtained a significant main effect of picture qual-ity for metaphor [F(1,1939) =7.90, p<.05], but the other main effect and the interaction did notshow significance.

The results of these tests provide a ground for the simulation semantics based on the subdivi-sion of the figures of speech. As for synecdoche, phonological encoding generated in Experiment2 may give a good account for the disparity of results between the realistic version that caused alonger reaction time and the sketchy one that showed no significant difference in quickness of re-action. The processing of the realistic and detailed image might be interfered by the poor andschematic internal representation generated by the effects of verbalization. On the contrary, inverifying the properties of the depicted objects, the sketchy version showed the robustness to theeffects of identity confirmation. It might be none the worse for the mental image brought by pho-nological encoding, perhaps almost identical to it in quality, which probably explains why theidentification task failed to affect the result.

In contrast, metonymy is marked by the universal delaying effects of phonological encodingon the meaning processing of stimulus-pictures ; these effects reach high significance regardlessof degree of visual details. Identification task made reaction times much longer and almost equalfor both the realistic and sketchy versions. In this case, we could not recognize any longer the ad-vantage of the sketchy version in Experiment 1, which consisted in that scanning of simple repre-sentation was more rapidly executed than that of complicated one. We had noted a little earlierthat perceptual simulation played a central role in property verification for metonymy, and that

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Figure 6. Range of Word Association & Perceptual Simulation

there was no need to spend much time on picture recognition. However in Experiment 2, the taskpertaining to phonological encoding was uniformly allocated as overhead to the property verifica-tion. Picture recognition process for perceptual simulation placed an extra burden on both the real-istic and sketchy versions, and this might be the reason for a longer latency than in Experiment 1on both.

As for metaphor, the same result pattern as that of synecdoche was obtained in Experiment 1and 2. This suggests the possibility that as is the case of synecdoche, word association would besignificantly involved in semantic processing for metaphor. Nevertheless, judging from the extra-latency for the metaphor processing, several complicated mental factors, such as reflection orlearning, rather than perceptual simulation, must be taken into account for discussing this type ofisomorphism. It would take us beyond the scope of this paper so that we leave the matter openand mention this part of speech only summarily.

4. General DiscussionThe previous researches on simulation semantics elucidated that word association and percep-

tual simulation would be employed as two strategies in property verification task. In this study, weattempted to make a fundamental point that these two ways in meaning processing had their ownworking ranges depending on the semantic relationships between an object and its properties.Moreover, we showed that these relationships could be classified into three meta-categories, pro-vided by the terms of the classical rhetoric : synecdoche, metonymy and metaphor. Given the ex-planation above, two experiments that targeted this distinction by figures of speech showed thatword association was mainly used for synecdoche while perceptual simulation was strongly acti-vated for metonymy. The results of our experiments strongly support the viewpoint that languageusers may select unconsciously one of the two strategies that seems to be more adapted to the re-lational recognition mechanism for each semantic relationship. Despite the natural differences tobe likely to exist among the individual items that were used in the experiments, the results sug-gested that as the diagram (Figure6.) indicates here, the two mechanisms contributed to this typeof cognition in proportion to the corresponding weights on the portions of the semantic categoriesunderlying the relationship between a stimulus and its target. In other words, the lexical associa-tive strength might bring some effects in the property verification task in competition with the im-

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agery scanning performance. The influence of the phonological encoding on the two strategiesalso endorses this hypothesis. The results of Experiment 2, which are broadly consistent with thetraditional studies on the overshadowing effects of verbalization (Brandimonte, 1992 ; Schooler &Engstler-Schooler, 1990), permit us to combine them with the recent ones that promote the per-ceptual motor theories in simulation semantics (Barsalou, 1999).

In sum, the results reported here might illuminate a key question in the fundamental study oflanguage : how do we deal with meaning and its extension in the natural language which is proc-essed internally? In this sense, it is worth noting here that figures of speech can be considered asproducts of our important cognitive ability that manipulates semantic development. Participantscan immediately respond to the words taxonomically associated to a picture, but they took signifi-cantly longer time to scan the adjacent parts of an object or the entities associated by contiguity.This finding can be interpreted as difference in activated brain areas, so that further investigationusing fMRI or pupillary responses (e.g. Meer, Friedrich, Stelzel & Kuchinke, 2003 ; Kable, Spell-meyer & Chatterjee, 2002) would be expected to corroborate our conclusion.

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