The influence of congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength on the spatial-valence metaphoric cong
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The influence of congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength on the spatial‑valence metaphoric congruency effect in a word valence judgment task Chi‑Shing Tse1,2 · Yanli Huang3 · Taoran Zeng1,4 · Yanyun Zhou1 · Yuen‑Lai Chan1 Received: 3 November 2019 / Accepted: 14 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In a word valence judgment task, positive words (e.g., excellence) are judged faster when presented at the top (congruent position) than at the bottom of the screen (incongruent position), whereas the opposite pattern occurs for negative words (e.g., disaster). This spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect reflects top-positive/bottom-negative metaphoric association and may be attributed to at least three possible mechanisms: spreading activation between spatial and valence concepts (activation account), epistemic function that a conceptual metaphor serves to reduce the uncertainty associated with valence concepts (epistemic account), and/or the extent to which spatial-valence metaphoric association is relevant to task demand (relevance account). In three experiments, we manipulated congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength in a word valence judgment task to test these three possible accounts. Results showed that the metaphoric congruency effect was larger when a high (vs. equal) proportion of targets appears in congruent, relative to incongruent, position, and for targets with strong (vs. weak) valence. However, the effect in reaction time measure was not modulated by whether the target appeared in the position being near vs. far away from the center of the screen. The overall findings are better accommodated by the relevance account. The implications of the current findings on other theoretical accounts, such as Conceptual Metaphor Theory and polarity correspondence account, are also discussed.
Introduction Conceptual metaphor According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson 1999; Meier, Schnall, Schwarz, & Bargh 2012; Santiago, Roman, & Ouellet 2011), a conceptual metaphor is a linguistic expression as well as a cognitive tool that helps individuals to comprehend abstract concept (target) through * Chi‑Shing Tse [email protected] 1
Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong, China
2
Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
3
School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
4
Department of Sports Science and Physical Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
congruent concrete concept (source) via a metaphoric association. People cannot enjoy the same direct experience of interacting with abstract concepts that do not have physical referents in the world as they can with concrete concepts. The spatial-valence metaphoric association, the focus of the current study, offers a good example. Image schemas are conce
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