Abstract
Metaphors supply flexibility, expressibility, and a method by which to expand language.
In this study, verbal and nonverbal tests that probed metaphoric capacity were devised using body parts-i. e. eyes, hands, mouth and legs. The subjects were 30 aphasic patients (15 fluent and 15 nonfluent) and 10 normal controls. There tests included basic tests of non-metaphoric operations, metaphor tests and spatial analogy tests. The metaphor tests involved production and comprehension tasks to identify whether the subjects could apply the words of body parts to other objects which have a physical similarity. The spatial analogy tests required the subjects to map body parts onto trees in either upright, horizontal, or upside-down orientation.
The results showed that the aphasics had difficulty in applying the well-known words of body parts to the parts of other objects as metaphor, the use of which is familiar in normal language. When all the heights of relative positions of the mapped body parts on trees were compared, some vertical reversals were present in aphasics. Certain responses of fluent aphasics implied the deficits of semantic components underlying the mechanism of naming. Therefore methods must be developed for lexical training, for aphasic patients, which will help them transfer words metaphorically.
