Abstract According to the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), conceptual metaphors, such as “Life is a journey,” are used to map the characteristics of abstract domains (e.g., life) onto more accessible concrete domains (e.g., a journey). Uses such as “dead-end job” and “they’re on the right track” are manifestations of this conceptual metaphor. When and how these mappings might be created remains unclear. Bowdle and Gentner’s (2005) career of metaphor hypothesis suggests that metaphors in “X is a Y” form (e.g., “a lawyer is a shark”) undergo a change in the mode of processing as those metaphors transition from novel conceptual pairings to familiar ones. The current study asks whether the associations between conceptually related concepts are accessed while the metaphoric language is processed in working memory (WM) and, if so, whether the role of WM is moderated by familiarity. If processing linguistic applications of conceptual metaphors involves active access of the concrete source domain, processing metaphoric language, like the concrete language it is being mapped onto, should involve activation of concrete representations and recruit more visual WM resources than literal abstract language. Experiment 1 found no difference in the visual WM demands of processing literal language and conventional expressions of conceptual metaphors. Experiment 2 found that novel expressions of conceptual metaphors placed greater demands on visual WM than familiar expressions. Together, these data provide some support for CMT but suggest that familiarity of the linguistic form of the metaphor plays a role in determining processing modality.

中文翻译：

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处理传统隐喻语言的视觉工作记忆需求

摘要 根据概念隐喻理论 (CMT; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980)，概念隐喻，例如“生命是一段旅程”，被用来将抽象领域（例如，生活）的特征映射到更易于理解的具体领域（例如， 旅程）。诸如“死路一条”和“他们走在正确的轨道上”之类的用法就是这种概念隐喻的体现。何时以及如何创建这些映射仍不清楚。Bowdle 和 Gentner (2005) 的隐喻假设生涯表明，“X 是 Y”形式的隐喻（例如，“律师是鲨鱼”）随着这些隐喻从新颖的概念配对转变为熟悉的概念配对，在处理模式上发生了变化那些。目前的研究询问在工作记忆 (WM) 中处理隐喻语言时是否访问了概念相关概念之间的关联，如果是，WM 的作用是否受到熟悉度的调节。如果处理概念隐喻的语言应用涉及对具体源域的主动访问，则处理隐喻语言，就像它被映射到的具体语言一样，应该涉及具体表示的激活，并比文字抽象语言招募更多的视觉 WM 资源。实验 1 发现处理文字语言和概念隐喻的常规表达的视觉 WM 需求没有差异。实验 2 发现，概念隐喻的新颖表达比熟悉的表达对视觉 WM 的要求更高。一起，