Memory and Metaphors: The Memorability of Emotionally Evocative Metaphors

Abstract

It is often believed that verbatim memory for language does not exist. However, a focus has been placed on the comparison between memory for gist and verbatim memory, deemphasizing the mere presence of verbatim memory (Gurevich, Johnson, and Goldberg, 2010). Therefore, the present study replicates past work to discover if verbatim memory is present while extending further into other influences over memorability by addressing metaphors. The present experiment considers metaphors due to their emotionally evocative nature as compared to literal counterparts, and therefore aims to find better recognition memory for metaphors as compared to literal counterparts (Citron & Goldberg, 2014). Furthermore, the study controls for frequency of target words, a sometimes overlooked, yet influential factor for memorability. Results find the presence of verbatim memory and an effect of increased memorability for hit rates of metaphors compared to literal counterparts, but fails to find a significant overall effect between memorability of metaphors and literals when considering d-prime measures. Keywords: Memory, metaphors, verbatim memory, emotion.