Abstract
This study explored the capacity to appreciate metaphor in forty aphasic patients, focusing on the vocabulary of body parts: mouth, hands, and legs.
The test, examining the metaphoric use of body parts, was administered for those who were able to comprehend them. The test required the subjects to transfer body part vocabulary to parts of familiar objects and unfamiliar line drawings, and to map these vocabulary onto a car.
The aphasics' performance was analyzed by comparing the results of forty normal subjects on the same test. 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. As the tasks became more difficult, random responses gradually increased. Though their performances markedly improved after instruction, significant difference was still found, compared with subjects in the normal group. It was also found that some of the aphasics' recognition problems. Therefore, in order to improve their metaphoric capacity, methods must be developed on the cognitive level as well as on the linguistic level.
