Metaphor Comprehension as Problem Solving: An Online Study of the Reading Process. (1)

1. Interaction Theory and Problem Solving A special issue on "Cognitive Approaches to Metaphor" very fittingly calls forth a collaboration between a literary critic and a cognitive psychologist. Taking advantage of the unique skills afforded by each discipline, we have attempted to forge an interdisciplinary approach to metaphor that--for the literary critic-- concretizes the hypothesized cognitive processes involved in reading the poetic text (e.g., image generation, filling in of "gaps," drawing of analogies), while--for the cognitive psychologist--provides the commentary which bears on the wider cultural and literary contexts of this text. Our particular convergence of literary criticism with cognitive psychology is to be found in the Interaction theory of metaphor. While this theory of metaphor is not a dominant one within which empirical research is currently being conducted, (2) it has the potential, as the literary critic Ina Biermann has stated, for providing "a sound basis for the empirical study of metaphor in literature and specifically in poetic texts" (63). What is more, Interaction theory--by drawing "attention to the creative, 'online' strategic aspects of metaphor" (Gineste, Indurkhya and Scart 120)--is particularly suited to analyzing complex metaphors, to be appreciated in full when a poetic text is unraveled into its constituent parts and their interaction made explicit by the reader (as in the present study). In a previous essay, we have detailed the relationship between Interaction theory and Gestalt psychology, demonstrating that the very qualities of a metaphor which are stressed by Interaction theorists enable the study of metaphor to fall within the scope of a Gestalt-oriented cognitive psychology. (3) These major qualities are: (1) A metaphor is an emergent whole, created by an interaction between its primary and secondary subjects; (2) A single metaphor should be understood within a larger context (such as provided, typically, by the literary text); (3) Comprehending a metaphor is akin to problem solving, and in its most creative form ("productive thinking"; Wertheimer) involves an act of perceptual and semantic restructuring. The first two qualities make explicit the identification of a metaphor with a gestalt as a "shape or form": it is an emergent whole, which is fully comprehended once the interaction between its primary and secondary subjects is fully analyzed; such an analysis must be conducted at a higher level than that of a comparison of features (Tversky) and therefore requires a full textual-interaction analysis. In summary, these two qualities foreground the Gestalt emphasis on the significance of context in determining form and were the focus for our previous essay. The present essay focuses on the third quality, which readily lends itself to an empirical investigation. Such an investigation is important for a number of reasons. One is theoretical, derived within Gestalt psychology itself. A second is metatheoretical, creating a bridge between two different paradigms of cognition and among different areas of research. A third is pragmatic: to quote the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, "there is nothing so practical as a good theory" (169). We address each of these considerations in turn. First, in stressing problem solving we are placing textual analysis and metaphor comprehension within a Gestalt tradition of questioning "what happens if one really thinks, and thinks productively, and what may be the decisive features and the steps? " (Wertheimer 2). Our Gestalt-Interactionist approach views the reader as being faced with a problem-situation presented by the metaphor and by the text. We postulate that the reader will be going through a process of textual interpretation (i.e., the revision of suppositions and the filling in of semantic gaps, as discussed by Perry and Steinberg) while reading. The objective of the present study is thus to provide empirical support for viewing metaphor comprehension in terms of the cognitive process of problem solving, as students of literature begin to unravel a whole poetic text. …