He catapulted his words from the dais: An ERP investigation of novel verbal metaphors

Many ERP studies have highlighted greater semantic processing difficulty for novel metaphors than for literal expressions, reflected by a more negative N400. However, most of these findings were for nominal metaphors, and studies have rarely looked at other types of metaphors, such as verbal predicative metaphors, which involve the metaphorical use of verbs in verb/patient expressions. The aim of the present study was thus to investigate the nature and time course of the cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of novel predicative metaphors. Participants were asked to make semantic judgments about metaphorical (“to catapult the words”), literal (“to catapult the stones”) and meaningless (“to color dust”) expressions. Results revealed greater N400 amplitude for meaningless expressions than for either literals or metaphors, and showed that literals and metaphors differed at posterior right electrodes. Late frontal positivity was also observed. This was greater for novel predicative metaphors than for either literal or meaningless expressions at frontal electrodes.