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1. Hidden Brain States Reveal the Temporal Dynamics of Neural Oscillations During Metaphor Generation and Their Role in Verbal Creativity

   https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70023  

   Yu, Yuhua; Krebs, Lindsay; Beeman, Mark; Lai, Vicky_T (February 2025, Psychophysiology)

   ABSTRACT We investigated the oscillatory brain processes while people generated metaphors for science concepts. Applying a hidden Markov model, we extracted brain states, representing temporally disentangled oscillatory processes, from EEG data. By associating the trial‐by‐trial occupancy of brain states with the creative quality, novelty, and aptness of the generated metaphors, we identified oscillatory processes that played a role in creative ideation in a data‐driven manner. Metaphor novelty was positively associated with occupancy in a state featuring widespread alpha‐band synchronization during the early trial stage and occupancy in a state featuring alpha‐band desynchronization during the later trial stage. In addition, metaphor novelty was negatively associated with gamma‐band power. Our results not only extend previous literature on the role of oscillatory processes in creative ideation but also highlight the importance of temporal dynamics in understanding the brain mechanisms during sustained cognitive task performance. 

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2. Automatic Scoring of Metaphor Creativity with Large Language Models

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2024.2326343  

   DiStefano, Paul V; Patterson, John D; Beaty, Roger E (March 2024, Creativity Research Journal)

   Metaphor is crucial in human cognition and creativity, facilitating abstract thinking, analogical reasoning, and idea generation. Typically, human raters manually score the originality of responses to creative thinking tasks – a laborious and error-prone process. Previous research sought to remedy these risks by scoring creativity tasks automatically using semantic distance and large language models (LLMs). Here, we extend research on automatic creativity scoring to metaphor generation – the ability to creatively describe episodes and concepts using nonliteral language. Metaphor is arguably more abstract and naturalistic than prior targets of automated creativity assessment. We collected 4,589 responses from 1,546 participants to various metaphor prompts and corresponding human creativity ratings. We fine-tuned two open-source LLMs (RoBERTa and GPT-2) – effectively “teaching” them to score metaphors like humans – before testing their ability to accurately assess the creativity of new metaphors. Results showed both models reliably predicted new human creativity ratings (RoBERTa r = .72, GPT-2 r = .70), significantly more strongly than semantic distance (r = .42). Importantly, the fine-tuned models generalized accurately to metaphor prompts they had not been trained on (RoBERTa r = .68, GPT-2 r = .63). We provide open access to the fine-tuned models, allowing researchers to assess metaphor creativity in a reproducible and timely manner. 

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3. Flexible semantic network structure supports the production of creative metaphor

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2021.1879508  

   Li, Yangping; Kenett, Yoed N.; Hu, Weiping; Beaty, Roger E. (January 2021, Creativity Research Journal)

   null (Ed.)

   Metaphors are a common way to express creative language, yet the cognitive basis of figurative language production remains poorly understood. Previous studies found that higher creative individuals can better comprehend novel metaphors, potentially due to a more flexible semantic memory network structure conducive to remote conceptual combination. The present study extends this domain to creative metaphor production and examined whether the ability to produce creative metaphors is related to variation in the structure of semantic memory. Participants completed a creative metaphor production task and two verbal fluency tasks. They were divided into two equal groups based on their creative metaphor production score. The semantic networks of these two groups were estimated and analyzed based on their verbal fluency responses using a computational network science approach. Results revealed that the semantic networks of high-metaphor producing individuals were more flexible, clustered, and less rigid than that of the low-metaphor producing individuals. Importantly, these results replicated across both semantic categories. The findings provide the first evidence that a flexible, clustered, and less rigid semantic memory structure relates to people’s ability to produce figurative language, extending the growing literature on the role of semantic networks in creativity to the domain of metaphor production. 

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4. An Individual-Differences Approach to Poetic Metaphor: Impact of Aptness and Familiarity

   Stamenković, D.; Milenković, K.; Ichien, N.; Holyoak, K. J. (January 2022, Metaphor and symbol)

   Using poetic metaphors in the Serbian language, we identified systematic variations in the impact of fluid and crystalized intelligence on comprehen-sion of metaphors that varied in rated aptness and familiarity. Overall, comprehension scores were higher for metaphors that were high rather than low in aptness, and high rather than low in familiarity. A measure of crystalized intelligence was a robust predictor of comprehension across the full range of metaphors, but especially for those that were either relatively unfamiliar or more apt. In contrast, individual differences associated with fluid intelligence were clearly found only for metaphors that were low in aptness. Superior verbal knowledge appears to be particularly important when trying to find meaning in novel metaphorical expressions, and also when exploring the rich interpretive potential of apt metaphors. The broad role of crystalized intelligence in metaphor comprehension is consistent with the view that metaphors are largely understood using semantic integration processes continuous with those that operate in understanding literal language. 

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5. Metaphor comprehension in preschool children

   https://doi.org/10.34842/starr  

   Starr, Ariel; Petersen, Taylor; Sridhar, Sahana (January 2025, Language Development Research)

   Recent work suggests that though young children can comprehend metaphors based on shared percep-tual or functional features of objects, comprehending metaphors based on abstract relations across do-mains presents a greater challenge. We conducted two pre-registered studies (n = 272; mean age = 3.77 years; 143 female) to investigate children’s ability to understand metaphors based on object and abstract similarities. We also assessed how children’s language learning environments (monolingual or bilin-gual) relate to their metaphor comprehension. Children were successful in understanding both types of metaphors. In addition, monolingual and bilingual children were equally proficient in metaphor com-prehension. These findings highlight the sophisticated ways that preschool-aged children can use their rapidly developing lexicons. 

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