The role of consciousness in Chinese nominal metaphor processing: a psychophysical approach

Conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) holds that most conceptual metaphors are processed unconsciously. However, whether multiple words can be integrated into a holistic metaphoric sentence without consciousness remains controversial in cognitive science and psychology. This study aims to investigate the role of consciousness in processing Chinese nominal metaphoric sentences ‘A是B’ (A is[like] B) with a psychophysical experimental paradigm referred to as breaking continuous flash suppression (b-CFS). We manipulated sentence types (metaphoric, literal and anomalous) and word forms (upright, inverted) in a two-staged experiment (CFS and non-CFS). No difference was found in the breakthrough times among all three types of sentences in the CFS stage, while literal sentences were detected more slowly than either metaphoric or anomalous sentences in the non-CFS stage. The results suggest that the integration of multiple words may not succeed without the participation of consciousness, let alone metaphoric processing. These findings may redefine ‘unconscious’ in CMT as ‘preconscious’ and support the indirect access view regarding how the metaphoric meaning is processed in the brain.