Date of Graduation

5-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Levine, William

Committee Member

Makhanova, Anastasia

Second Committee Member

Dempsey, Sean

Third Committee Member

Marren, Susan

Abstract

Certain literary features of text (metaphor, idiom, etc.) are said to be foregrounded, or stand out from the surrounding text. Prior research (Miall & Kuiken, 1994) demonstrates that foregrounded text slows readers down, which is consistent with attention being grabbed. Do features of literary text, more specifically metaphors, improve memory as a result of being foregrounded? The present study investigated the effect of reading metaphoric phrases on reading time, memory accuracy, and decision times. We predicted that when a textual phrase was read as a metaphor, verbatim memory would be better retained than when that same phrase was read as a literal sentence. Fifty-four undergraduate students completed a measure of print exposure and read target phrases that were presented as either a metaphor or a literal sentence, depending on the prior context. Afterward, participants completed a memory recall task. The results of our analyses generally did not support our hypothesis. Additional research investigating these effects is suggested.

Keywords

memory; metaphor; foregrounding; language comprehension

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