The Impact of Metaphors on Academic Text Comprehension: The Case of Students With Dyslexia

Abstract

Metaphor has long been used by scholars to make concepts more comprehensible. However, this use of figurative language has never been investigated in relation to the way students with dyslexia learn from academic texts. This study aims to assess the impact of metaphors on overall academic text comprehension in university students with and without dyslexia. Excerpts from scientific articles containing metaphors were adapted to be presented in two comparable conditions: metaphorical and literal. Legibility indexes were controlled for to guarantee the same difficulty between conditions. Twenty-eight students with dyslexia and thirty students without dyslexia underwent a multiple-choice comprehension task for two texts, one for each condition, and provided evaluations of text perception. A standardised assessment of general reading comprehension and cognitive abilities, such as reading speed, reading accuracy, and working memory was conducted. Data revealed that, when reading ability was controlled for, students with dyslexia presented significantly lower comprehension scores only in texts containing metaphors, despite comparable perceived complexity and increased interest in metaphorical texts. These findings suggest that metaphors used in educational discourse may not be entirely inclusive, as they seem to impose additional cognitive demands on students with dyslexia.