De rol van semantische afstand in visuele metaforen

The role of semantic distance between two juxtaposed objects has not been studied thoroughly in visual perception. Does information processing differ between visual metaphors and semantically close objects (hyponyms), or between visual metaphors and semantically distant objects? Probably, semantic distance causes viewers to identify visual metaphors less fast than hyponyms. On the other hand, they might identify visual metaphors faster than objects with similar semantic distance, but without any ground for comparison (ad hoc group). A first experiment with response latencies for identification of 27 object pairs revealed such a pattern, supported by post hoc comprehension measures. In a second experiment, instruction was changed from identification into appreciation. Response latencies were shorter overall. For the ad hoc group, response latencies were longer than for both hyponyms and visual metaphors. Hyponyms were appreciated more than both other groups. Recall was better for visual metaphors than for the ad hoc group. We conclude that a smaller semantic distance indeed helps to identify and appreciate object pairs. Contrary to our expectation, visual metaphors, with a relatively larger semantic distance and a ground for comparison, were not appreciated most.