Novel metaphors are constantly created and some of them become conventional with repeated use. We investigated whether the processing of novel metaphors, as revealed in ERP waveforms, would change after inducing a metaphoric category merely by having participants explain the meaning of an expression. Participants performed a semantic judgment task…

Conceptual metaphor theory suggests that knowledge is structured around metaphorical mappings derived from physical experience. Segregated processing of object properties in sensory cortex allows testing of the hypothesis that metaphor processing recruits activity in domain-specific sensory cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging…

For Chinese compounds, neighbors can share either both orthographic forms and meanings, or orthographic forms only. In this study, central presentation and visual half-field (VF) presentation methods were used in conjunction with ERP measures to investigate how readers solve the sublexical semantic ambiguity of the first constituent character in…

The current study manipulated the visual field and the number of senses of the first character in Chinese disyllabic compounds to investigate how the related senses (polysemy) of the constituted character in the compounds were represented and processed in the two hemispheres. The ERP results in experiment 1 revealed crossover patterns in the left…

Previous research indicates severe disabilities in processing figurative language in people diagnosed on the autism spectrum disorders. However, this aspect of language comprehension in Asperger syndrome (AS) specifically has rarely been the subject of formal study. The present study aimed to examine the possibility that in addition to their…

Neuroimaging studies have shown that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) plays a critical role in semantic and syntactic aspects of speech comprehension. It appears to be recruited when listeners are required to select the appropriate meaning or syntactic role for words within a sentence. However, this region is also recruited during tasks not…

The present study used the signal detection theory to test the hypothesis that the right hemisphere (RH) is more sensitive than the left hemisphere (LH) to the distant semantic relations in novel metaphoric expressions. In two divided visual field experiments, sensitivity (d') and criterion ([beta]) were calculated for responses to different types…

In this event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined how semantic and referential aspects of anaphoric noun phrase resolution interact during discourse comprehension. We used a full factorial design that crossed referential ambiguity with semantic incoherence. Ambiguous anaphors elicited a sustained negative shift (Nref effect), and…

Electrophysiological techniques were used to assess the generalizability of concreteness effects on word processing across word class (nouns and verbs) and different types of lexical ambiguity (syntactic only and combined syntactic/semantic). The results replicated prior work in showing an enhanced N400 response and a sustained frontal negativity…

This study investigated metaphor comprehension in the broader context of task-difference effects and manipulation of processing difficulty. We predicted that right hemisphere recruitment would show greater specificity to processing difficulty rather than metaphor comprehension. Previous metaphor processing studies have established that the left…

The present study examined the manner in which both hemispheres utilize prior semantic context and relative meaning frequency during the processing of homographs. Participants read sentences biased toward the dominant or the subordinate meaning of their final homograph, or unbiased neutral sentences, and performed a lexical decision task on…

Previous research suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) focuses on strongly related word meanings; the right hemisphere (RH) may contribute uniquely to the processing of lexical ambiguity by activating and maintaining a wide range of meanings, including subordinate meanings. The present study used the word-lists false memory paradigm [Roediger,…

Previous laterality studies have implicated the right hemisphere in the processing of metaphors, however it is not clear if this result is due to metaphoricity per se or another aspect of semantic processing. Three divided visual field experiments varied metaphorical and literal sentence familiarity. We found a right hemisphere advantage for…

Using an auditory semantic priming paradigm, the present study investigated the abilities of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) non-fluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and normal control individuals to access, out of context, the multiple meanings of three types of ambiguous words, namely homonyms (e.g., ''punch''), metonymies (e.g.,…

In this study, we used a novel cognitive paradigm and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) to investigate the neural substrates involved in processing three different types of sentences. Participants read either metaphoric ("Some surgeons are butchers"), literal ("Some surgeons are fathers"), or non-meaningful sentences…