Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879

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Brain and Cognition

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/b&c

N400 differences between physical and mental metaphors: The role of

Theories of Mind
Paolo Canal a, Luca Bischetti a, Chiara Bertini b, Irene Ricci b, Serena Lecce c,
Valentina Bambini a, *
a
Department of Humanities and Life Sciences, University School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Pavia, Italy
b
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
c
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Whether Theory of Mind (ToM) contributes to metaphor understanding has been largely investigated in language
ERP acquisition and decay. Yet we know very little about the role of ToM in real-time processing of metaphors in
Experimental Pragmatics neurotypical adults. Here, we tested the relationship between ToM and metaphor through Event Related Po­
Neuropragmatics
tentials (ERPs) by capitalizing on the difference between metaphors inviting inferences on physical (Boxers are
Metaphor
pandas) vs. mental aspects (Teachers are books). Physical metaphors involved a larger and sustained negativity
Theory of Mind
Reading the Mind in the Eyes compared to mental ones. This pattern resembled concreteness effects and suggests that physical metaphors may
benefit from both verbal and perceptual information. Moreover, higher scores in the Reading the Mind in the
Eyes Test (RMET), but not in the Animation task, were associated with a reduction of the N400 amplitude for
both physical and mental metaphors. When exploring the ERP temporal trajectory with Generalized Additive
Mixed Modeling, earlier differences between metaphors characterized individuals with higher RMET scores.
Among the various ToM components, thus, emotion recognition seems to be involved in the processing of
metaphors in general, with an earlier impact on the mental type. These findings highlight the multifaceted nature
of metaphor, at the crossroad of language, social and perceptual experience.

1. Introduction
The extent to which the ability to understand other’s mental states,
known as Theory of Mind (ToM), contributes to comprehend non-literal
language is at stake in the present work, where we investigated the
electrical correlates of the brain activity during metaphor processing.
Participants in a communicative exchange build up a representation of
the context that comprises the interlocutors’ thoughts and beliefs (e.g.,
van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), which are part of the common ground. This
information contributes to resolve the ambiguities that are ubiquitous in
language and to work out the intended meaning of a message (Grice,
1975; Sperber & Wilson, 2002). ToM skills are deemed instrumental to
construct these representations via embedding others’ mental states and
therefore are typically seen as crucial for understanding a broad range of
pragmatic uses of language (e.g., Zufferey, 2010), such as conversational
implicatures (e.g., Surian et al., 1996), irony, and humor (e.g., Bischetti
et al., 2019; Monetta et al., 2009). As for metaphor, however, the role of
ToM skills is not straightforward (Bosco et al., 2018; Gernsbacher &
Pripas-Kapit, 2012): while some scholars suggest that ToM skills are key
as understanding a metaphor involves understanding how another
person sees the world (Happé, 1993), others claim that ToM is certainly
not sufficient to comprehend metaphorical language (Norbury, 2005)
and several studies failed to observe a significant involvement of socio-
cognitive skills in metaphor-related tasks (e.g., Olkoniemi et al., 2016).
From an empirical point of view, most of the available evidence on the
role of ToM skills in metaphor comes from developmental and clinical
studies and is based on behavioral measures. Innovatively with the
previous literature, this study aimed at providing fresh insights on the
still open debate on the relationship between metaphor, pragmatics, and
ToM by (i) focusing on neurotypical adults; (ii) adopting EEG-based
measures; and (iii) capitalizing on the contrast between metaphors
inviting inferences on physical (Boxers are pandas) vs. mental aspects
(Teachers are books).

* Corresponding author at: Department of Humanities and Life Sciences, University School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Piazza della Vittoria 15, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
E-mail address: valentina.bambini@iusspavia.it (V. Bambini).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2022.105879
Received 29 August 2021; Received in revised form 21 February 2022; Accepted 2 May 2022
Available online 28 June 2022
0278-2626/© 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
P. Canal et al.
1.1. Defining metaphor
According to the classic definition, a metaphor, such as Lawyers are
sharks, is a rhetorical device used in a variety of communicative contexts
(e.g., Ervas et al., 2017) in which two different concepts or domains,
represented by the topic (or target) lawyers and the vehicle (or source)
sharks, are linked together. From a psycholinguistic perspective, this is
achieved through a mental process that determines which properties of
sharks can be ascribed to lawyers, characterizing them as aggressive and
vicious. Several theories on this “linking” mechanism exist, from
alignment (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005; Gentner & Wolff, 1997), to map­
ping (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), and categorization (e.g., Glucksberg,
2003). Focusing on its communicative role, Relevance Theory proposes
that metaphor falls within a spectrum of non-literalness and involves
inferring the speaker’s meaning through operations that adjust the
denotation of the lexically encoded concepts and allow for the deriva­
tion of the implicature (Wilson & Carston, 2007).
The variety and complexity of metaphor are attested by the many
dimensions that characterize the differences between these expressions
(e.g., Gibbs, 1999), which may concern: i) the linguistic structure
(Shutova et al., 2013; Steen et al., 2010; Werkmann Horvat et al., 2021),
ii) the degree of novelty (e.g., Bowdle & Gentner, 2005), iii) the psy­
cholinguistic variables (e.g., Bambini et al., 2014), and iv) the content
conveyed by the metaphor (metaphors about emotion, e.g., Kövecses,
2003; metaphors about scientific concepts, e.g., Tang et al., 2017; etc.).
The present work focuses especially on the latter aspect, and, specif­
ically, it investigates the processing differences between metaphors that
convey physical vs. mental attributes, as this distinction seems key when
it comes to the role of ToM, as explained in the next section.
1.2. Theory of Mind, metaphor, and the physical/mental distinction
A seminal study on the role of ToM in metaphor understanding is
Happé (Happé, 1993), who, grounding on the relevance-theoretic view
that metaphor involves inferring the speaker’s intended meaning,
described first-order ToM as necessary for understanding metaphors in
children with autism spectrum disorder. A few years later, Norbury
(Norbury, 2005) toned down this claim, highlighting that semantic
knowledge plays an even more central role, with ToM skills supporting
metaphor understanding by contributing to a better contextual repre­
sentation. Following these early studies, most of the later literature
considering the role of ToM skills in metaphor focused on acquisition in
typically and atypically developing children and adolescents, especially
in the case of autism (thirteen studies evaluated in a meta-analysis of
Kalandadze et al., 2018). Further works considered adult clinical pop­
ulations such as schizophrenia and other clinical conditions (Cham­
pagne-Lavau & Stip, 2010; Langdon et al., 2002; Thoma & Daum, 2006).
Overall, the results are heterogeneous probably due to a range of factors,
including the characteristics of the task, the psychometric properties of
the ToM measure, and possibly the type of metaphor and the specific
content conveyed by it.
Focusing on the latter aspect, a relevant distinction proposed in the
literature concerns physical and mental metaphors. Early develop­
mental literature compared sensory metaphors (communicating an
experience by referring to sensory modalities; e.g., Her perfume was
bright sunshine) and psychological metaphors (communicating a psy­
chological experience; e.g., The prison guard was a hard rock), showing
that mental metaphors were more difficult to understand (Cicone et al.,
1981; Vosniadou et al., 1984; Wang & Dowker, 2010; examples from
Winner et al., 1976), due to the complexity of dealing with the psy­
chological dimension (Ortony et al., 1978). More recent literature
revived this distinction, by considering it in light of ToM involvement.
Whereas physical metaphors require inference on physical attributes (e.
g., Dancers are butterflies), mental metaphors require inferences on psy­
chological attributes of the topic (e.g., Mammy is a candy). As pointed
out in Lecce et al. (2019), the contrast between physical and mental
2
Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879
metaphors echoes the contrast used in a classic ToM task such as the
Strange Stories between physical/causal inferences (e.g., someone get­
ting wet because a bush poked holes in his umbrella; Rice et al., 2015)
and mental states inferences (e.g., a misunderstanding of intentions,
such as mistakenly interpreting a request as a potential robbery). On this
basis, Lecce et al. (Lecce et al., 2019) examined from a developmental
angle the idea that mental metaphors require greater involvement of
ToM compared to physical ones. While both cases seem to require ToM
to a certain extent as they deal with inferring the speaker’s meaning (Del
Sette et al., 2020), only in the case of mental metaphors the specific
speaker’s meaning refers to mental attributes. The study’s findings
confirmed this idea, showing that greater ToM skills were associated
with better understanding of mental (but not physical) metaphors in
early phases of middle childhood. Importantly, the difference between
mental and physical metaphors is not just in the grade of difficulty, as
both types scored high in accuracy, but specifically in the involvement of
ToM. A similar view is supported also by other evidence showing
different behavior in mental vs. physical metaphors in children with
developmental disorders associated with ToM difficulties, such as
autism spectrum disorder (Melogno et al., 2017). On the same line, there
is evidence that in schizophrenia impaired mental interpretation is
related to lower ToM scores, while this association is not present for
physical metaphors (Agostoni et al., 2019). More in detail, individuals
with schizophrenia were impaired in understanding both physical and
mental metaphors, but it is only in the interpretation of mental ones that
the link with ToM emerged.
Overall, the empirical evidence suggests that not all metaphors are
alike when it comes to attribution of mental states and that ToM is likely
to play a greater role when the meaning to infer is specifically expressing
mental characteristics. The association between ToM and metaphor,
however, has never been investigated with reference to real-time pro­
cessing as reflected in the EEG. The use of this methodology could help
understand when ToM plays a role in metaphors and what processes are
at stake.
1.3. ERP literature on metaphor
The study of metaphor comprehension has often employed the Event
Related Potential (ERPs) technique, focusing on two ERP components (e.
g., Canal & Bambini, 2022): the N400 and a later positive component,
referred to as P600 or Late Positive Complex (LPC). The N400 is a
negative deflection of the ERPs reaching a maximum at 400 ms from
stimulus presentation that is typically recorded from centro-parietal
electrodes and is a well-established index of lexical/semantic pro­
cesses. More specifically, the N400 seems to reflect the effort spent in
retrieving conceptual knowledge from semantic memory in dynamic
interaction with the context (e.g., Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). The P600
occurs a few hundred milliseconds later, reaching a maximum at about
600 ms with a positive polarity: in recent views, its functional role is
linked to general monitoring processes (e.g., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky &
Schlesewsky, 2019) or broad sentence integration mechanisms (e.g.,
Brouwer & Hoeks, 2013).
With respect to metaphor processing, most of the studies have re­
ported greater N400 effects for metaphors compared to literal sentences,
whereas only a minority observed later positive effects (Canal & Bam­
bini, 2022). The functional interpretation of the metaphor-induced
N400 is consistent with the general function attributed to this compo­
nent: specifically, it has been related to the lexical/semantic operations
needed to access and elaborate the concepts evoked by the metaphors,
with slight differences depending on the approaches (Arzouan et al.,
2007; Coulson & Van Petten, 2002; De Grauwe et al., 2010; Jankowiak
et al., 2021; Lai et al., 2009, 2019; Pynte et al., 1996). Conversely, in the
few studies where a P600/LPCS was observed, this effect was linked to a
broader interpretation of the metaphorical meaning (Bambini et al.,
2016; De Grauwe et al., 2010; Pynte et al., 1996; Weiland et al., 2014).
This is in line with other studies on pragmatic processing that
P. Canal et al.
highlighted a P600 effect when deriving the implicit meaning in the case
of irony (Regel et al., 2011; Spotorno et al., 2013), humor (Canal et al.,
2019), as well as presupposed content (Domaneschi et al., 2018).
Importantly, not all metaphors are alike. Evidence showed that when
metaphors are more familiar (see the distinction between novel – Science
is a glacier – and conventionalized – A gene is a blueprint – metaphors in
Bowdle & Gentner, 2005) and when they are presented with the
adequate contextual ground, the N400 amplitude is hampered (Bambini
et al., 2016; Lu & Zhang, 2012). Furthermore, when testing the pro­
cessing of literary metaphors (Bambini et al., 2019), which are typically
novel and creative, the effort spent in deriving the intended meaning
was associated with sustained negative effects in the ERPs (see also
Arzouan et al., 2007; Tang et al., 2017).
More recent research has moved forward and investigated processing
differences related to the modality and the content that the metaphors
convey. For instance, studies have focused on ERP differences related to
the distinction between motion and auditory metaphors (Schmidt-Snoek
et al., 2015), as well as the extent to which visual primes influence
metaphorical meanings (Ronderos et al., 2021). Other studies (Forgács,
2020; Forgács et al., 2015; Lai et al., 2019) investigated whether met­
aphor processing is more similar to the processing of abstract or concrete
words, exploiting the concreteness effect on the ERPs. Concrete words,
as compared to abstract ones, typically elicit more negative N400
components (West & Holcomb, 2000) with relatively long-lasting effects
(e.g., Barber et al., 2013). Lai and colleagues (Lai et al., 2019) observed
that verbal metaphors (The church bent the rules) elicited more negative
N400 than abstract verbal expressions (The church altered the rules) and
that they were not statistically different from concrete verbal expres­
sions (The bodyguard bent the rod). Although the debate is still open (see
Forgács, 2020; Forgács et al., 2015), these findings support the idea of a
metaphor concreteness effect (Lai et al., 2019).
1.4. The present study
The aim of this work was to shed new light on the debate over the
relationship between metaphor and ToM. To achieve this aim, we
designed the present study considering the perspective offered by the
ERP methodology and the importance of the type of content conveyed
by the metaphor. Specifically, adopting the manipulation in Lecce et al.
(2019), we compared the processing time-course of two types of meta­
phor, which varied for content, either referring to mental characteristics
(e.g., Teachers are books, meaning that teachers know a lot) or physical
characteristics (e.g., Boxers are pandas, meaning that they have a black
eye) of the topics. To examine the relationship with ToM, we selected
two tests tapping on different aspects of the broader ToM construct: the
Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET, Baron-Cohen et al., 2001),
measuring emotion recognition, and the Animation Task (Castelli et al.,
2002), capturing the ability to attribute intentions.
Based on the previous literature, we derived two sets of hypotheses.
The first one is somewhat preliminary and concerns the distinction be­
tween mental and physical metaphors. Given the evidence described
above that indicates that metaphors elicit N400 effects and less often
later effects such as P600 (Canal & Bambini, 2022), and given also that
concrete stimuli elicit more pronounced and prolonged negativities (e.
g., Barber et al., 2013), we expected that the elaboration of physical
metaphors would lead to a larger N400 compared to mental metaphors.
This would indicate a tighter link with perceptual experience during
lexical/semantic processes associated with the metaphors. Conversely,
mental metaphors may possibly lead to a larger P600 due to higher ef­
forts in the global interpretation.
The second – more central – set of hypotheses concerns the effect of
ToM. Given the evidence derived from other fields that there is a link
between ToM and metaphors in general (Del Sette et al., 2021) but
mental metaphors seem to be more strongly associated with ToM than
physical ones (Lecce et al., 2019), we expected that (i) ToM would
impact the ERP response to all metaphors and (ii) this impact would be
3
Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879
greater for mental compared to physical metaphors. More specifically,
we expected to observe not only a main effect but also an interaction
between ToM scores and the metaphor type factor, on the amplitude of
the ERP to metaphors. Since there is no previous literature exploring
how ToM and metaphor interact in real-time processing, however, we
left it open whether the effect of ToM would hinge on early or late
components, acknowledging that this leads to a different interpretation
of the results. When ToM modulates earlier components, this would
indicate a greater involvement in lexical/semantic aspects, whereas a
later effect would suggest that ToM contributes especially to the global
interpretation of a metaphor.
It is worth noting that the experimental design used here has several
elements of novelty compared to the previous psychophysiological
literature. First, we opted for a direct comparison between two types of
metaphors, without using a control condition (no literal nor anomalous
sentences were included in the materials). The reasons for this choice
were that: i) the ERP correlates of metaphor compared to literal
comprehension are well established (e.g., Canal & Bambini, 2022) and
we were not interested in replicating those effects; ii) it may be not
trivial to capture the ERP reflection of processing differences related to
physical vs. mental content, and the direct comparison between meta­
phor types allows for collecting the largest possible number of obser­
vations to gain a more desirable statistical power while keeping the task
duration relatively limited; iii) building a control condition in which
metaphors and literal statements differ only in terms of figurativity is
extremely difficult, as literal stimuli tend to be more familiar (Bambini
et al., 2013; Cardillo et al., 2010), while the two conditions should be
comparable also in terms of other characteristics and inferential pro­
cessing required (for similar considerations, see Carston, 2021).
A second element of novelty concerned the analysis. In the main
analysis, we used single-trial analysis of the ERPs, which allows to test
the simultaneous effect of by-item and by-subject predictors and is a way
to control for potentially confounding factors, such as metaphor famil­
iarity and frequency of the target word. Furthermore, in the exploratory
analysis, we adopted the innovative approach offered by Generalized
Additive Mixed Modeling (GAMM), to further investigate the effect of
ToM. Till now used only in a limited number of ERP studies on language
(Hendrix et al., 2017; Meulman et al., 2015; Tremblay & Baayen, 2010;
Tsiwah et al., 2021), this approach is highly promising as it allows for
modeling the continuous ERP response over time with no need of
selecting a posteriori time windows.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Participants
The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from 35 native
speakers of Italian1 (20F, age: 23.6 y.o., range: 20–29) with normal or
corrected to normal vision. All participants were right-handed (scores >
85 in the handedness questionnaire, Oldfield, 1971) and none of them
reported neuropsychiatric diseases. They received monetary compen­
sation for their participation. All participants provided informed consent
before the start of the EEG experiment and the experimental protocol
was approved by the local Ethics Committee (Department of Brain and
1
To provide an estimate of the power of our study, we focus on the proba­
bility to detect the difference between physical and mental metaphors. We used
the power analysis tool provided by Jake Westfall (Westfall et al., 2014). By
providing information on a) the standardized variance parameters of the pre­
dictors analysis that was carried out (i.e., residual variance= 0.92, variance for
participant intercepts = 0.057, variance for participant slopes = 0.013, vari­
ance for stimulus intercept = 0.008), b) the experimental design (stimulus-
within-condition), c) the number of participants (N=34 after 1 exclusion), d)
items (N=124), the power was rather strong, amounting to roughly 97%
chances to reveal a small effect size of d=0.2.
P. Canal et al. Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879

Behavioral Sciences of University of Pavia, protocol n18/2017). Table 2

Examples of the experimental materials.
2.2. Assessment of ToM skills Physical metaphors Mental metaphors

Quei saltatori sono molle Gli attori sono maschere

ToM skills were assessed using two tests: the Reading the Mind in the Those jumpers are springs Actors are masks
Eye test (RMET, Baron-Cohen et al., 2001; Italian version, Vellante et al., Le ballerine sono farfalle I genitori sono scudi
2013) and the Animation Task (Abell et al., 2000; Castelli et al., 2002). Dancers are butterflies Parents are shields
Gli ubriaconi sono spugne Certi alunni sono asini
In the RMET, participants are presented with a series of pictures (n = 36)
Drunkards are sponges Some students are donkeys
depicting the eye region of the face and four adjectives for each picture, I gemelli sono fotocopie I filosofi sono aeroplani
and they are asked to choose the adjective that best describes what the Twins are photocopies Philosophers are airplanes
person in the picture thinks or feels. Responses are scored 1 (correct) or I vecchi sono tartarughe Alcuni capiufficio sono iene
0 (incorrect) and the final score ranges from 0 to 36. In the Animation Elderly people are turtles Some bosses are hyenas

task, participants are presented with a series (n = 8) of silent animations Note: Italian metaphors are translated literally into English (in italic) and the
with small and big triangles, created to resemble movements that could target words where EEG was time-locked are underlined. The two conditions are
be of two types, either Theory of Mind (i.e., movements with the displayed in the two columns (the experimental manipulation was between-
intention to deceive or tease) or goal directed (i.e., joint movements item).
representing shared actions “performed” by the two triangles). The
scoring is made by evaluating the accuracy of the scene description, and
Table 3
the degree of intentionality and complexity of the mental states referred
Characteristics of the experimental stimuli across conditions.
to the triangles in the interpretation of each scene. Descriptive statistics
of the two tests are reported in Table 1. Concerning the distribution of Physical Metaphors Mental Metaphors Comparison across Types

the scores in the experimental sample, two Shapiro-Wilk tests showed Length 7.36 6.95 t(121.88) = 1.12, p = .26
that distributions do not depart from normality (RMET: W = 0.98, p = (4–12) (4–12)
.80; Animation task: W = 0.97, p = .45) and do not show skewness that Frequency 1.27 1.41 t(120.48) = -1.60, p = .11
would be indicative of ceiling effects. (0.30–2.51) (0–3)

Familiarity 3.91 4.12 t(121.79) = -0.98, p = .33

2.3. Stimuli (2.04–6.56) (1.64–6.76)

Aptness 4.45 4.66 t(122) = -1.34, p = .18

A set of 155 non-conventional metaphors was initially constructed ex
novo, and the experimental factor of Metaphor Type was manipulated
between-item. The structure of the metaphor was always Spec Xs are Ys,
with topics (Xs) denoting human beings (plural nouns referring to social
roles) and vehicles (Ys) denoting concrete non-human entities associ­
ated with Xs on the basis of either physical or mental characteristics (see
Table 2 for examples).
In order to make sure that the two metaphor types were comparable
in terms of aptness and familiarity, and to measure how well each
expression conveyed physical or mental meaning, we designed a web-
based rating study of all expressions involving a total of 53 partici­
pants (40F, age: 23.91 y.o., range: 21–32, years of education: 15.83,
range: 13–18). Each participant evaluated half of the materials of the
initial set for Familiarity (How often do you think you have heard or used
the metaphor in that or in a similar form?), Aptness (How appropriately do
you think the metaphor describes the salient characteristics of the subject?),
Physical characteristics (How much does the metaphor describe the subject
in terms of physical or action-related qualities?), and Mental characteristics
(How much does the metaphor describe the subject in terms of psychological
qualities, including personality or mental contents, such as emotions,
thoughts, and desires?). All judgments were expressed on 7-point Likert-
type scales. A subset of 128 metaphors was selected on the basis of the
Aptness scores (> 3) from the rating study, and for having target words
(i.e., the metaphor vehicles) of comparable length and word frequency
as extracted from the CoLFIS Database (Bertinetto et al., 2005). After the
EEG experiment, we noted that four metaphors created to convey
Physical meaning were actually rated as more Mental than Physical and
were discarded. The final set of materials consisted of 124 metaphors
(62 for each type).
No differences between conditions (see Table 3 and Fig. 1) concerned
the control variables that were taken into account at the level of the
Table 1
Descriptive statistics of the experimental sample in the two ToM tasks.
Mean (SD)
Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task 27.15 (2.61)
Animation Task 23.59 (3.02)
(3–6.24) (3–6.24)
Physical 5.47 3.49 t(115.56) = 15.50, p < .001
Dimension (4–6.72) (1.36–6.05)
Mental 2.18 4.99 t(119.64) = -21.46, p < .001
Dimension (1.12–4.16) (3.56–6.52)
Note: Characteristics of the experimental stimuli (physical and mental meta­
phors) at the level of the target word (Length and Frequency) and at the level of
the metaphor. Average values and range (in parentheses) are provided. The last
column displays the contrast between the two conditions (via independent
samples t-tests).
single word (i.e., for the metaphor vehicle): length and (logarithmic)
frequency. Values of Familiarity and Aptness of the metaphors were also
not statistically different across Types, while the judgment of how much
Physical and Mental content each expression conveyed showed the ex­
pected pattern: Mental metaphors were rated as more mental than
Physical metaphors (+3.35), and Physical metaphors were rated as more
physical than Mental metaphors (+2.55).
2.4. Procedure
Participants were fitted with the EEG cap in a quiet and dimly lit
recording room, sitting at approximately 80 cm from a 22 in computer
screen, and with a Cedrus® Response Pad RB-540 (Cedrus Corporation,
San Pedro, CA, USA) placed on the desk in front of them.
They were instructed to carefully read for comprehension a set of
sentences that would appear on the screen in a word by word fashion
and to perform two tasks. First, following one third of the trials (N = 41),
participants were asked to perform a word-matching task in which they
had to choose which of two adjectives (e.g., wise vs. dusty) better
matched the previous expression (e.g., Teachers are books). This task was
used to keep participants focused on the sentence content and served as
an indirect measure of comprehension (e.g., Bambini et al., 2011, 2016).
Moreover, at the end of the experiment, participants were asked to
perform a cued-recall task (on N = 30 items that were not used in the
first task), in which, provided with the fragment of a sentence (Boxers
are…), they had to complete it (pandas). Only half of the fragments were

4
P. Canal et al.
Fig. 1. Ratings of the materials. The characteristics (familiarity, aptness,
mental dimension, physical dimension, vehicle word frequency, and vehicle
word length) of the final set of materials are displayed using box (vertical lines
correspond to the median value) and whiskers plots, for both Physical (orange)
and Mental (light blue) metaphors. (For interpretation of the references to color
in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
presented during the experiment, while the other half were sentences of
identical structure not included in the EEG. Given the evidence that
greater elaboration of metaphors leads to better cued recall (e.g., Mar­
schark & Hunt, 1985), we used this second task to stimulate active
processing and further ensure comprehension.
Sentences were presented in white on a black background as
following: a fixation cross (400 ms and 250 ms blank screen) preceded
the first two words of the sentence, which were presented for a variable
time interval (216 ms plus 16 ms for each letter) followed by 250 ms
blank screen (cf. Otten & Van Berkum, 2007). The third word, the
copula, was presented for 300 ms followed by a variable blank screen
(ranging from 200 to 500 ms) to avoid habituation, and the target word
was presented for 400 ms followed by a 850 ms blank.
2.5. EEG recording and preprocessing
A Brainamp® system (Brain Products GmbH, Gilching, Germany)
was used to acquire the EEG in AC current at sampling rate of 512 Hz
and with a hardware low cut-off filter (10 s time constant). Fifty-seven
electrodes were mounted on the EEG cap following the 10–20 Interna­
tional System: Fp1, Fpz, Fp2, AF7, AF3, AF4, AF8, F7, F5, F3, F1, Fz, F2,
F4, F6, F8, FT7, FC5, FC3, FC1, FC2, FC4, FC6, FT8, T7, C5, C3, C1, Cz,
C2, C4, C6, T8, CP5, CP3, CP1, Cpz, CP2, CP4, CP6, P7, P5, P3, P1, Pz,
P2, P4, P6, P8, PO7, PO3, Poz, PO4, PO8, O1, Oz, O2. FCz electrode was
the online reference electrode, while two electrodes were placed on the
mastoid bones, and four additional electrodes (below and above the left
eye and at the lateral canthi) were used to derive VEOG and HEOG
channels to monitor the eye movements. MATLAB® (The MathWorks,
5
Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879
Natick, US) was used for signal processing using EEGLAB (Delorme &
Makeig, 2004) and FieldTrip (Oostenveld et al., 2011) toolboxes. Off­
line, the EEG was high-pass filtered (using a second-order − 12 dB/
octave slope − IIR Butterworth filter with a cut off frequency of 0.1 Hz)
and re-referenced to the average activity of the two mastoids. ICA
decomposition was used to identify and remove eye-related activity
only. The EEG was then segmented into epochs around the presentation
of the target words (from -900 to 1200 ms, with the baseline correction
applied using a 200 ms pre-stimulus interval), and artifact rejection was
performed using a semi-automatic procedure: epochs with EEG values
exceeding ± 80 μV (between -300 and 1200 ms) were rejected, and the
remaining epochs were further evaluated using visual inspection. The
criterion was to reject epochs with unusual activity while keeping those
epochs containing amplitudes beyond the threshold, when these
occurred on a small number (less than three) of electrodes on the pe­
riphery. One participant had a rejection rate above 35% and was
excluded from the analyses. The overall rejection rate for the remaining
participants was 15.55% for physical and 16.67% for mental metaphors.
2.6. Statistical analyses
We report three analyses, two of which were confirmatory and one
exploratory. The first analysis (Topographic Analysis) aimed at evalu­
ating the magnitude and scalp distribution of the effect of Metaphor
Type (Physical vs. Mental). The second analysis (Predictors Analysis)
aimed at testing the effect of by-item (metaphor’s Familiarity and ve­
hicle’s Word Frequency) and by-subject (RMET and Animation Task
scores) predictors on the EEG voltage. For the Topographic and Pre­
dictors analyses, we investigated the effect of Metaphor Type on the
ERPs restricting our interest to the time windows of the two components
generally involved in metaphor processing based on the literature, that
is, the N400 and the P600. For the N400, we selected a 300–500 ms time
window, which is very often used to test the N400 (e.g., Coulson & Van
Petten, 2002; Kutas & Federmeier, 2011). For the P600, we selected a
500–800 ms time window, which covers the interval in which the P600
is typically tested in classic studies on syntactic manipulations
(Osterhout et al., 1996; Osterhout & Mobley, 1995; for an overview of
the P600 time-windows in the literature, see Kaan & Swaab, 2003;
Molinaro et al., 2011) and in pragmatic manipulations too (e.g., Spo­
torno et al., 2013). An exploratory analysis completes the results and it
was intended to follow up the pattern emerging from the Topographic
and Predictors Analyses, and in particular to better characterize the
effect of RMET scores across types of metaphors on the whole epoch, not
restricted to specific time windows.
In the Topographic Analysis, all electrodes, except for Fp1, Fp2, and
Fpz and the two ocular channels, were assigned to two topographic
factors, with three levels each: Longitude (AF including all AF, F and FC
electrodes, C including all C and CP electrodes, and PO, including all P,
PO and O electrodes) and Laterality (L including all 7, 5, and 3 electrode
columns; M including 1, Z, and 2 columns; R including 4, 6, and 8 col­
umns). The models evaluated the simple effects of the factor Metaphor
Type (Physical, Mental) in each of the nine topographic cells of the
interaction between topographic factors. In the Predictors Analysis, we
evaluated the effect of predictors in a region of interest selected on the
basis of the topographic cells that were sensitive to the experimental
manipulation. In these regions, the models tested the interaction be­
tween Metaphor Type and by-item and by-subject regressors.
For the analysis of both behavioral (using the logit link function for
accuracy data) and ERP data from the time windows, we fitted linear
mixed models (LMM, Pinheiro & Bates, 2000) in R (R Core Team, 2019)
using the lme4 package (Bates, Mächler, et al., 2015). We coded inde­
pendent variables as following: categorical variables with two levels
were effect-coded; topographic factors with three levels were coded
using successive differences contrasts; numeric predictors were centered
on the mean (e.g., Schad et al., 2020). We set up an a priori contrast
between Physical and Mental Metaphors (the latter serving as reference
P. Canal et al. Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879

level) for each topographic cell and t-tests were used to evaluate the
reliability of each contrast.
In the exploratory analysis, the effect of Metaphor Type and the role
of three predictors (RMET scores, Word Frequency, and metaphor Fa­
miliarity) on the voltage trajectories over time were tested during the
whole epoch (-200 to 1200 ms) and in a subset of electrodes, with
Generalized Additive Mixed Modeling (GAMM; Lin & Zhang, 1999),
using mgcv (Wood, 2017) and itsadug (van Rij et al., 2020) packages. In
this analysis, the ERP voltages were re-sampled every 20 ms (the final
dataset consisted of more than 300,000 observations). To account for
differences across conditions, we estimated a parametric term for Met­
aphor Type describing overall differences due to this factor, and the
difference smooth of Type over time (for useful tutorials on the use of
GAMM, see Sóskuthy, 2017; Wieling, 2018). Moreover, tensor product
interactions evaluated the influence of RMET, Familiarity, and Word
Frequency on the EEG trajectories. Critically, a tensor product interac­
tion (Time by Metaphor Type by RMET) evaluated differences in the
influence of RMET across the two levels of Metaphor Type on the tem­
poral development of the EEG amplitude.
When using LMM, we adopted the “parsimonious” modeling frame­
work (Bates, Kliegl, et al., 2015) in which the random structure was
selected by a) fitting the maximal zero correlation parameters model for
the highest order interaction, b) simplifying the structure removing from
the model those terms that did not capture relevant portions of variance
(using the rePCA() function), and c) removing those factors that after
adding correlations between parameters showed extremely high corre­
lations with other terms. By doing so, the models reported are all
identified, caused no convergence issues, and still explained comparable
amount of variance with respect to the models estimating more pa­
rameters. Concerning the random structure of the GAMM analysis, we
used a random smooth term for each trial, a random smooth for each
participant, and a random difference smooth for Metaphor Type at the
level of each participant.
Whenever possible, and following APA recommendations, we re­
ported the unstandardized measure of effect size (e.g., Pek & Flora,
2018), using 95% confidence intervals estimated with Wald statistic,
using the confint() function.
2.7. Data availability statement
Data and the R scripts reproducing the results are available on the
OSF platform (https://osf.io/ex5hd/?view_only).

Fig. 2. ERP Grand Averages and Scalp Maps. The figure depicts the ERPs from a set of 9 representative electrodes. Voltage amplitudes are displayed from − 200 to
1000 ms from the onset of the metaphor vehicle. Orange lines represent physical metaphors, while light-blue lines represent mental metaphors. On the bottom, the
scalp distribution of the effect (physical minus mental) is shown, for both time windows (300 to 500 ms on the left, and 500 to 800 ms on the right) tested. (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

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P. Canal et al. Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879

3. Results Table 4
Summary of the Predictors Analysis.
3.1. Behavioral Time Window

300–500 ms 500–800 ms
In the word-matching task, participants were highly accurate across
conditions (Physical: M = 97%; Mental: M = 98%), with no differences Intercept (Grand Mean) 0.11 (0.24) 0.16 (0.24)
t = 0.46, p = .65 t = 0.66, p = .51
between the two (z < 1). Moreover, participants were able to correctly Familiarity 0.09 (0.10) 0.08 (0.12)
retrieve the vehicle of the metaphor in 57% of the cases (Physical: M = t = 0.90, p = .37 t = 0.64, p = .52
56%; Mental: M = 58%), with no differences associated with Type (z < Word Frequency 0.11 (0.10) -0.25* (0.12)
1). t = 1.14, p = .26 t = -2.04, p = .044
Metaphor Type -0.66** (0.22) -0.79** (0.27)
t = -2.94, p = .005 t = -2.94, p = .005
3.2. ERPs Animation Task -0.44+ (0.25) -0.30 (0.24)
t = -1.78, p = .084 t = -1.24, p = .22
From visual inspection (Fig. 2), the brainwaves show the typical RMET 0.63* (0.25) 0.09 (0.25)
t = 2.50, p =.017 t = 0.37, p = .72
shape of ERPs elicited by written words, with the N1-P2 complex fol­
Metaphor Type: Animation Task -0.16 (0.21) 0.25 (0.24)
lowed by the negative deflection of the N400 component, which reaches t = -0.78, p = .44 t = 1.02, p = .32
a maximum around 400 ms. Differences between conditions are visible Metaphor Type: RMET -0.17 (0.22) -0.16 (0.27)
during both the N400 and the P600 time windows: Physical metaphors t = -0.80, p = .43 t = -0.61, p = .54
elicit a larger negativity compared to Mental ones, which onsets soon Note: The effect of the different terms (across rows) and in both time windows
after 300 ms in parietal locations and carries over until 900 ms. (across columns) is described. Models’ coefficients, standard deviation (in pa­
rentheses), t values, and corresponding p values are provided. Significance is
3.2.1. Topographic analysis indicated with stars (** p <.01; * p <.05; + p <.1).
300–500 ms time window.
The analysis of simple effects of Metaphor Type in interaction with Concerning the role of individual differences in the 300 to 500 ms
the topographic factors shows that Physical metaphors elicited more time window, RMET scores showed a robust effect on voltage amplitude
negative ERPs compared to Mental ones in all Parietal Occipital loca­ with a slope of 0.63, t(34.67) = 2.51, p = .017, CI [0.14, 1.12], while
tions, including Left with a difference of -0.63 μV, t(164.7) = -1.99, p = Animation Task scores had a marginally reliable effect with a slope of
.048, CI [-1.25, -0.01], Midline with a difference of -0.80 μV, t(164.6) = -0.44, t(34.01) = -1.78, p = .08, CI [-0.93, 0.05]. The effect associated
-2.53, p = .012, CI [-1.42, -0.18] and Right with a difference of -0.69 μV, with ToM skills thus had the opposite direction depending on the test: an
t(164.7) = -2.20, p = .029, CI [-1.31, -0.08]. The effects over Central increase of one standard deviation in RMET scores was associated with
Midline and Central Right amounted to -0.83 μV and -0.65 μV and were more positive and therefore less pronounced N400 amplitudes (+0.63
statistically reliable with t(164.7) = -2.64, p = .009, CI [-1.45, -0.21] for μV), while an increase of one standard deviation in Animation Task
Central Midline, and t(164.5) = -2.05, p = .042, CI [-1.26, -0.03] for scores tended to be associated with more negative and therefore larger
Central Right. The effect was not present over the remaining locations N400 amplitudes (-0.44 μV). In the 500–800 ms time window, individ­
(all ps > 0.19). These results are perfectly compatible with the scalp ual differences in ToM measures were not reliable predictors of the EEG.
distribution of the N400, that is, “largest over centro-parietal sites, with Models’ coefficients and relevant statistics are reported in Table 4.
a slightly right-hemisphere bias (at least for written words in sentences)” Concerning the role of by-item control variables, Familiarity of the
(Kutas & Federmeier, 2011; p. 623). metaphor and Word Frequency of the vehicle had limited impact on the
500–800 ms time window. N400 amplitude (no significant effects), although showing the expected,
The effect of Metaphor Type was reliable over Central Midline positive, direction. In the 500–800 ms time window, we observed an
electrodes with a difference of -0.76 μV, t(233.8) = -2.31, p = .022, CI effect of Word Frequency with a slope of -0.25, t(122.43) = -2.04, p =
[-1.40, -0.11], and over Central Right electrodes with a difference of .044, CI [-0.49, -0.01], attesting that a decrease of one standard devia­
-0.70 μV, t(231.6) = -2.15, p = .033, CI [-1.34, -0.06]. The difference due tion in Word Frequency was associated with more positive ERPs (+0.25
to Type approached significance in Frontal Midline locations with an μV).
effect of -0.65 μV, t(223.5) = -1.92, p = .06, CI [-1.31, 0.01], in Parietal
Occipital Midline locations with an effect of -0.62 μV, t(230.4) = -1.92, 3.2.3. Exploratory analysis with GAMM
p = .06, CI [-1.27, 0.01], and in Parietal Occipital Right locations with The statistics described so far followed a confirmatory approach
an effect of -0.63 μV, t(230.8) = -1.94, p = .05, CI [-1.27, 0.01]. The aimed at testing the behavior of the N400 and P600. The Topographic
difference was not reliable over the remaining locations (all ps > 0.18). Analysis confirmed that the negativity in the 300–500 ms time window
Even though the differences between conditions are still reliable during is very much compatible with an N400 effect, while the Predictors
this time interval, with physical metaphors associated with more Analysis highlighted a role of RMET scores in modulating the amplitude
negative ERPs, they seem less robust as compared to the previous time of the N400 of both types of metaphors (i.e., a main effect of RMET) but
window, and the area interested by the effect shrinks. no specific involvement in mental metaphors (i.e., no interaction be­
tween RMET and Metaphor Type). The lack of interaction between
3.2.2. Predictors analysis RMET and metaphor type may be due to the choice of the time window
Two clusters of channels were selected on the basis of the Topo­ of analysis, since research has previously shown that metaphor
graphic Analysis above: the N400 cluster included 5 out of 9 topo­ comprehension may affect only portions of the N400 time window (e.g.,
graphical regions (PO - Left, Midline, and Right; C - Midline and Right); De Grauwe et al., 2010; Lai et al., 2009, 2019; Lai & Curran, 2013). We
the P600 cluster included two topographical regions (C - Midline and thus further explored the interaction between ToM skills and Metaphor
Right). The analysis (see Table 4) confirmed that the effect of Metaphor Type, and the role of Familiarity and Word Frequency, on a set of twelve
Type was reliable in both clusters: in the 300–500 ms time window, the electrodes where the N400 effect was largest (Cz, C2, C4, CP1, Cpz, CP2,
Physical metaphors were more negative than Mental ones of -0.67 μV, t CP4, Pz, P1, P2, P4, Poz), and using GAMM as they are particularly apt
(40.28) = -2.94, p = .005, CI [-1.11, -0.22]; as for the 500–800 ms time for investigating the whole temporal trajectory of the ERP.
window, the effect of Type had the same direction and similar magni­ The results of the GAMM analysis are reported in Table 5 and Fig. 3.
tude with an average difference of -0.79 μV, t(41.17) = -2.94, p = .005, The deviance explained by the model attests at 9.45%, which is a low
CI [-1.31, -0.26].

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P. Canal et al. Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879

Table 5 only one isobar (between 2 and 3 μV). The interaction between Time and
Summary of the GAMM model in the exploratory analysis. Familiarity was only marginally significant, revealing slightly more
Parametric coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value p positive voltages associated with the less familiar metaphors in a time
window between 1000 and 1200 ms.
Intercept 0.03 0.26 0.13 .90
Metaphor Type -0.42 0.26 -1.63 .10
4. Discussion
Smooth terms: Effective degrees of F value p
freedom The main hypothesis guiding this study was that ToM skills should
have an impact on processing metaphors and that this impact should be
s(Time) 13.83 91.76 < .001***
s(Time): Metaphor Type 4.21 2.89 .017* greater in processing metaphors that capitalize on mental characteristics
s(RMET) 1.00 1.39 .24 (e.g., Teachers are books) than metaphors capitalizing on physical char­
s(Fam) 2.10 1.55 .22 acteristics (e.g., Boxers are pandas). Our results offer evidence to support
s(Word Frequency) 1.00 0.02 .90 this hypothesis, although only partially. As expected, the main analysis
ti(Time, RMET) 7.96 0.87 .39
ti(Time, Familiarity) 5.20 1.80 .097+
highlighted a role of ToM skills in metaphor processing, hinging spe­
ti(Time, Word Frequency) 2.71 1.03 .37 cifically on the N400, but this role was observed equally in mental and
ti(Time, RMET): Metaphor Type 4.40 2.93 .015* physical metaphors. However, when exploring the whole temporal tra­
jectory of the ERP using GAMM, we found ToM scores to be associated
Random Smooth terms: Effective degrees of F value p with early processing differences (roughly between 200 and 400 ms)
freedom between metaphor types, with a greater impact on mental ones.
s(Time, Item) 621.19 4.44 < .001*** Although still initial, this evidence suggests that the specific role of ToM
s(Time, Participant) 270.96 22.23 < .001*** for mental compared to physical metaphors might be earlier rather than
s(Time, Participant): Metaphor Type 165.06 5.60 < .001*** greater. A further relevant aspect of our findings on ToM is that the
Note: The model tests the interaction between Metaphor Type and RMET scores, above effects on the ERP amplitude were found only for the RMET scores
further accounting for Familiarity and Word Frequency, in a subset of 12 centro- (and not for the AT scores), suggesting a different role in metaphor for
parietal electrodes. Metaphor Type models the difference between physical and the different aspects of ToM.
mental metaphors, with a negative parametric coefficient indicating more In addition, and preliminary to the ToM findings, our study high­
negative voltages for physical metaphors. Effective degrees of freedom indicate lighted processing differences between mental and physical metaphors.
how complex the corresponding smooth (s) or surface (ti) is. The present model In line with what we expected, physical metaphors exhibited a larger
accounts for 9.32% of deviance. Significance is indicated with stars (*** p <
(and sustained) N400 effect compared to mental ones, which suggests a
.001; * p < .05; + p < .1).
“metaphor concreteness effect” and point to a richer semantic repre­
sentation of physical metaphors.
value, yet greater than previous work, that is likely due to the relatively The discussion below is organized in two main parts: first, we will
high noise of the EEG measurement (Meulman et al., 2015). In the elaborate on the differences in the time course of mental vs. physical
parametric coefficient section of Table 5, one can see how the effect of metaphors, and then we will discuss and offer an interpretation of the
Metaphor Type approaches significance, suggesting that overall (i.e., ToM effects observed in the study.
during the whole epoch and independently of the time development of
the differences) amplitudes associated with Physical metaphors are
4.1. Metaphor concreteness effect
slightly more negative than those associated with Mental metaphors.
Looking at the simple smooth terms indicated by s() in Table 5, it is
By comparing the ERP correlates associated with reading mental and
possible to further appreciate a significant non-linear smooth for Time
physical metaphors we showed that inferring a meaning related to the
(edf = 13.83, F = 91.76, p <.001), showing that the voltage trajectories
physical characteristics of the topic elicited – compared to inferring a
for the reference condition (Mental metaphors) have a complex shape,
meaning involving mental characteristics – more negative voltages
just reflecting the wiggliness of the ERP waveform and attesting how far
during a time interval ranging from 300 to 900 ms. The timing and the
it is from a straight line (see the time development of both waveforms in
scalp distribution of the effect during the 300–500 ms are fully
Fig. 3 (a)). More importantly, the interaction between the non-linear
compatible with the engagement of the N400 component, which is
smooth for Time and Type (edf = 4.21, F = 2.89, p = .017) shows that
enhanced for physical metaphors. The more negative voltages for
the difference between metaphors is significant over time, that the effect
physical metaphors also occur during the following time window and,
is non-linear (edf > 1), and that more pronounced differences emerge
given that the scalp topography did not change, seems to be indicative of
between 385 and 817 ms (Fig. 3 (b)).
a continuation of the N400 and therefore a sustained negativity for the
Moreover, a significant smooth tensor interaction involving Time,
physical type. This pattern for physical as compared to mental meta­
RMET and Metaphor Type (edf = 4.40, F = 2.93, p = .015) emerged,
phors resembles the time-course of the difference between concrete and
pointing to differences in the temporal development of the effect of
abstract words, and suggests a sort of “metaphor concreteness effect”,
RMET across conditions (Fig. 3 (c), (d) and (e)). In particular, we can use
similar to the well-known word concreteness effect. In what follows we
visual inspection of Fig. 3 (e) to appreciate the time development (Time
will articulate this idea more extensively.
on the x-axis) of the ERP differences in Metaphor Type (represented with
It is relatively well established that the processing of (more) concrete
colors) for the different RMET scores (on the y-axis): the negative dif­
words is associated with more negative N400 components compared to
ference (the pink area between 200 and 1000 ms) shows an S-shape
abstract words (e.g., Barber et al., 2013; Dufau et al., 2015; Holcomb
which drives the interaction and attests how the effect of Metaphor Type
et al., 1999; Kounios & Holcomb, 1994; Van Petten, 2014; Welcome
occurs earlier for participants with higher RMET scores (roughly be­
et al., 2011). Negative differences due to concreteness are present also
tween 200 and 600 ms), and later for lower RMET scores (roughly be­
after 500 ms (e.g., Barber et al., 2013; Gullick et al., 2013; Huang et al.,
tween 500 and 900 ms). If we look at the impact that RMET scores had
2010; West & Holcomb, 2000) and have been associated with mental
on the two conditions separately, one can see how the influence of RMET
processes related to imagery and simulation (e.g., West & Holcomb,
is stronger in mental metaphors (Fig. 3 (c)) in a time interval roughly
2000), which are deemed to affect the N700 component. To interpret
ranging between 200 and 400 ms: the dark green area with a vertical
these differences, scholars capitalized on the tenets of dual coding the­
orientation sees three isobars (between 1 and 4 μV), compared to the
ory concerning the representation of verbal and non-verbal information
corresponding area in the physical metaphors (Fig. 3 (c)) where there is
(e.g., Paivio, 1971, 2007): according to this view, the elaboration of

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P. Canal et al. Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879

Fig. 3. Visualization of the exploratory analysis. The figure depicts five panels. In panel (a) the smooth of time is represented for each condition (orange for physical
and blue for mental metaphors). Panel (b) depicts the actual smooth for the difference between physical and mental metaphors (the red dotted vertical lines indicate
when it is different from zero). In both (a) and (b), voltages are depicted (negative-up) on the y-axis. Panels (c) and (d) represent the surfaces for the time devel­
opment (x-axis) of the role of RMET (on the y-axis) on ERP voltages (the color-scale). The two panels show that the effect of RMET modulates the ERPs between 200
and 600 ms, and it is slightly more pronounced for mental metaphors between 200 and 300 ms. Panel (e) depicts the difference between (d) and (c), showing how the
effect of RMET shifts in time drawing the s-shape of the violet area: higher RMET scores show larger effects during the early period (200–600 ms), while for lower
RMET scores the effect mainly occurs between 400 and 1000 ms. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web
version of this article.)

concepts involves two separate but interconnected representational
systems of verbal and non-verbal information. Concrete and abstract
words are similar in terms of verbal representation, but they differ in
terms of non-verbal representation, which is available for concrete
words only. The larger N400 for concrete vs. abstract words would thus
be due to concrete words bearing more semantic information (from both
verbal and non-verbal systems) that “generally encourage more elabo­
rate processing” (Welcome et al., 2011).
We argue that the more negative ERPs to physical compared to
mental metaphors could be interpreted as a metaphor concreteness ef­
fect, and that physical metaphors might benefit from dual coding for
meaning representation: while mental metaphors are processed using
more abstract information in the verbal code only, physical metaphors
may involve the use of both verbal and non-verbal codes, inducing the
larger N400. Interestingly, the metaphor vehicles in our set of materials
were all concrete words. We further checked whether the words in the
two conditions reached similar concreteness levels (using the norms
collected from Brysbaert, Warriner & Kuperman 2014, after translation
from Italian into English), and found no differences across conditions (t
< 1), with an average of 4.72 (full range: 3.19 to 5) for mental and 4.69
(full range: 2.66 to 5) for physical vehicle words. The metaphor
concreteness effect thus seems to emerge from the concreteness or
abstractness that derives from the entire metaphorical expression, rather
than being function of the lexical properties of the single words used as
vehicles. To this respect, our findings extend previous ERP literature that
reported metaphor concreteness effects comparing metaphoric and
literal sentences (Lai et al., 2019), by showing concreteness effects due
to the more abstract or concrete interpretation of different metaphors.
To give an example, books (in the mental metaphor – Teachers are books)
and pandas (in the physical metaphor – Boxers are pandas) are both
concrete and highly imageable words, but the characteristics that are
promoted in the metaphors are very different, and this may drive the
ERP effect. It is just through conceptual knowledge that we can appre­
ciate mental metaphors, while for physical metaphors we may make use
of imagery and simulation, possibly scanning the relevant features of the
perceptual representation of the vehicle in order to grasp the link, and
eventually the intended meaning.
This idea is not novel in the metaphor literature, and the metaphor
concreteness effect could be easily accounted for by those theories of
metaphor understanding that foresee a role of perceptual simulation and
mental images. Within the Cognitive Linguistics account, Gibbs and
Matlock (2008), for instance, proposed that when reading verbal met­
aphors individuals use imagination and simulate the action referred to
metaphorically and this simulation provides important features that
feed interpretative processes. The idea is also present in Paivio’s ac­
count, who extended the dual coding theory to metaphor and proposed
that metaphors can be understood via verbal, imagery or both routes
(Paivio & Walsh, 1993) and with recent psycholinguistic evidence
supporting this view at least for low-familiar metaphors (Al-Azary &
Katz, 2021). Finally, the metaphor concreteness effect is also compatible
with the Relevance-theoretic pragmatic account proposed in Carston
(2010), claiming that visual images contribute to the inferential pro­
cedure that derives the speaker’s meaning. For instance, when elabo­
rating a metaphor like The surgeon was a butcher, we may rely on the
mental image of a “surgeon raising a butcher’s cleaver over the human
body on the slab” (p.315) and use such image to better represent the

9
P. Canal et al.
context and derive the implicated meaning of the expression. More
generally, acknowledging the role of imagery and simulation for com­
prehending metaphors is in line with multimodal models of semantic
processing (e.g., Binder & Desai, 2011; Borghi & Cimatti, 2010; Pexman,
2020), according to which semantic representations are grounded in
perceptual experience.
Moreover, the metaphor concreteness effect that we observed has a
particular value since it was found accounting for two variables that are
known from the literature to have a great impact on the ERPs, that is,
metaphor familiarity and word frequency. This was possible thanks to
the flexibility of mixed-effects models, which allow to test the joint effect
of by-item and by-subject variables and are gaining grounds also in ERP
research (e.g., Dambacher et al., 2006; Frank et al., 2015). Overall,
however, the role of these by-item variables was not robust, possibly
because the ranges of familiarity and word frequency in our stimuli were
too narrow.
An open question remains on whether the long-lasting effect (in the
500–800 ms time window) can be interpreted as a sustained negativity
for physical metaphors, as we argued in the part of the discussion above.
The alternative explanation would be that the late difference between
metaphor types is due to a positivity (i.e., a P600) for mental metaphors
compared to the physical condition. Indeed, one could expect that
mental metaphors pose higher efforts in sentence integration, because of
the involvement of the psychological dimension (Ortony et al., 1978).
Such greater difficulty could reflect in a P600, in line with the literature
that sees this component as an index of global interpretative efforts in
metaphors as well as in other implicit meanings (Bambini et al., 2016;
Brouwer & Hoeks, 2013). Indeed, we mentioned this possibility in our
set of hypotheses, although in weak terms, given that metaphor-induced
P600s are not ubiquitous and observed only in a small bunch of studies
(Canal & Bambini, 2022). However, while this explanation makes sense
at the theoretical level, by looking at the results we tend to dismiss it
because of two physiological factors such as the timing and the scalp
localization of the ERP difference between conditions. The effect at stake
is preceded by a canonical N400 during the 300–500 ms time window on
centroparietal electrodes. In the time window that follows, the scalp
localization looks very similar, while a P600 would recruit a different set
of neural generators leading to changes in the distribution of the effect.
We therefore argued that the observed pattern is compatible with the
idea that the late effect derives from the early effect (i.e., the N400),
which carries over to the second time window. As argued above, the
prolonged negativity is the outcome observed for concrete vs. abstract
words, and it seems reasonable to interpret it similarly in the case of
physical vs. mental metaphors.
With respect to this issue, however, we should acknowledge a limi­
tation of our design. Here we used a direct comparison between the
metaphor types, without including a literal “baseline”, because this
allowed us to focus on the contrast of interest and gain a better power
while keeping the task duration within reasonable limits. Yet, the use of
a literal condition can help disambiguate the polarity of the effects. With
a more complex design, thus, we could verify our interpretation of the
long-lasting effect as a sustained negativity for physical metaphors
compared to mental ones, which would be confirmed when the literal
stimuli have a less negative response than both types of metaphor not
only in the N400 but also in the later time window.
4.2. Metaphor and Theory of Mind
The core interest underlying this study was on the role of ToM in
metaphor processing. For the first time in the literature, we investigated
this topic by using the temporal resolution of the EEG, going beyond the
behavioral investigations available till now. The literature led us to
hypothesize (i) a general involvement of ToM in metaphor processing
due to the process of inferring the speaker’s intended meaning but also
(ii) a greater involvement of ToM for mental as compared to physical
metaphors. Indeed, while both types of expression require to infer the
10
Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879
speaker’s meaning, and thus might involve ToM to some extent, in the
case of mental metaphors the content to infer refers to psychological
attributes, making it legitimate to expect a greater involvement of ToM.
The main analysis confirmed (i) but not (ii), showing that ToM skills
had a measurable impact on the N400 amplitude during the processing
of both kinds of metaphors, regardless of the type: individuals with
higher RMET, and therefore more skilled in reading an emotion from the
eye-gaze, responded to all metaphors (either physical or mental) with a
reduced amplitude of the N400. Since the N400 is a well-established link
of lexical-semantic processes for language processing in general and for
metaphor too (Bambini et al., 2016; Kutas & Federmeier, 2011), this
finding suggests that ToM is beneficial for those operations that involve
accessing and elaborating upon the meaning of the lexical elements in
the metaphor.
In trying to interpret this finding more closely, it is important to
highlight that the role of ToM skills emerged when considering the
scores obtained in the RMET test, but not in the Animation Task (AT).
This result was unexpected and, we think, should be read considering: a)
the multi-componential nature of ToM captured by the two tests and b)
the methodological differences in the two ToM tasks. Indeed, important
differences characterize these two tests to the extent that they can be
thought as tapping on different aspects of ToM: the AT measures the
general tendency to attribute intentions underlying movements and
actions, whereas the RMET is generally thought as a valid and reliable
test of facial emotion recognition (e.g., Vellante et al., 2013), with sig­
nificant associations with emotion perception and cognitive empathy (e.
g., Oakley et al., 2016). Another important difference is that the AT is
based on visual dynamic stimuli (i.e., moving triangles), whereas the
RMET uses stimuli that are both visual and verbal. Specifically, the
RMET requires participants to select the word that best matches the
representation of the eye region by choosing one out of four alternatives.
Some authors pointed out that the RMET test “may be heavily based on
vocabulary skills” (e.g., Olderbak et al., 2015), which may represent a
factor in linking RMET scores and N400 amplitude. We, therefore, argue
that the RMET/N400 link could reflect the facilitatory role of emotion
recognition skills when it comes to elaborate the meaning of the lexical
items in a metaphor. In line with Norbury (2005), this facilitatory role
might come from a better capacity to represent a natural context for
these expressions.
As for our hypothesis that ToM should be greater for mental
compared to physical metaphors, although this did not emerge in the
main analysis, interesting insights came from the exploratory one. There
we analyzed the whole epoch to further characterize the role of indi­
vidual differences in RMET scores: we observed that the latency of the
difference between metaphor types temporally shifts depending on the
individual scores. Participants scoring higher in RMET show the earliest
differences between physical and mental metaphors, which onset as
soon as after 200 ms, whereas in participants with lower RMET the
differences between conditions surfaced later, around 500 ms. Further
inspection revealed that the less negative response associated with
higher RMET scores is driven by the specific effect of RMET on mental
metaphors, in an interval between 200 and 400 ms. In other words,
RMET has a stronger relationship with the correlates of mental meta­
phors, in a very early time window.
In functional terms, these findings seem to suggest that ToM, and
specifically emotion recognition, might aid the early recognition of
metaphors when these are mental rather than physical. This interpre­
tation is in line with another ERP study on pragmatic processing, which
showed that higher social skills impacted ERP response to humor very
early on, facilitating its detection (Canal et al., 2019). It might be indeed
that words that convey psychological implications are accessed and
elaborated faster by those individuals who are better at recognizing
emotions. Although this interpretation is suggestive, the differential role
of RMET in metaphor types calls for further scrutiny in future research.
The present results thus offer one more piece of evidence to the
debate about the involvement of ToM skills in metaphor, and provide
P. Canal et al.
several suggestions about this relationship that is elusive in many re­
spects. By using the ERPs and focusing on rather clearly defined pro­
cesses, such as those underlying the N400, we could highlight that ToM –
as measured through an emotion recognition test such as the RMET, but
not through the AT – covaries with the lexical-semantic processes at play
in both metaphors (based on the predictors analysis) and that the
involvement of ToM is more pronounced in mental metaphors in the
early phases (based on the exploratory analysis). Finding a role of ToM
may thus depend on metaphor content, and on how one can capture
(choosing between the several assessment tools available) the various
components that contribute to the broader ToM construct. Yet we could
not clarify how specific the effect of ToM skills is, that is whether ToM
skills would solely be associated with metaphor processing, or with
literal sentences processing as well. We leave to future research a full
characterization of this relationship, assessing the issue of specificity
using further control conditions (e.g., a literal baseline) and possibly a
larger set of ToM measures.
5. Conclusions
Overall, the study findings provide rather strong evidence of a
relation between ToM and the N400 in response to metaphor, as well as
initial mild evidence in favor of the idea that ToM plays a greater – or
better said, earlier – role in some metaphors than in others. Our work is
one of the few showing a relationship between ToM and metaphor
processing in a sample of young and healthy adults, standing out from
previous literature that focused on developmental and atypical pop­
ulations. In the few studies on neurotypical adults (e.g., Olkoniemi et al.,
2016), the link between ToM and metaphor often did not surface, while
we were able to detect it thanks to the ability of ERP measures to capture
subtle processes involved in metaphor interpretation.
The findings of this work have a number of theoretical consequences.
First, the role of ToM skills in the metaphor-induced N400 is consistent
with the pragmatic view that metaphor meaning is understood also by
exploiting the ability to infer others’ intentions (e.g., Sperber & Wilson,
1995). Elaborating on Happé’s claim that understanding how our in­
terlocutors see the world is crucial for metaphor comprehension (Happé,
1993), the data presented further suggest that understanding emotions
is a specific key factor. Second, the metaphor concreteness effect that we
reported might offer further empirical evidence for the idea that mental
images constitute an input of metaphor interpretive processes (Carston,
2010; Paivio & Walsh, 1993). Specifically, physical metaphors seem to
invite more elaborative processes whereby the speaker can use both the
verbal and the visual representational code to derive the relevant
interpretation. Taken together, the study findings highlight the multi­
faceted nature of metaphor and its being a language phenomenon placed
at the crossroad of social and perceptual experience.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Paolo Canal: Methodology, Writing – original draft, Resources,
Formal analysis, Visualization. Luca Bischetti: Methodology, Re­
sources, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Chiara Bertini:
Investigation. Irene Ricci: Investigation. Serena Lecce: Conceptuali­
zation, Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition. Valentina
Bambini: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Supervision,
Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
11
Brain and Cognition 161 (2022) 105879
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione,
dell’Università e della Ricerca) PRIN (Progetti di Ricerca di Rilevante
Interesse Nazionale) 2015 project “The Interpretative Brain: Under­
standing and Promoting Pragmatic Abilities across Lifespan and in
Mental Illness”, project code 201577HA9M, awarded to VB and SL. We
thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments, and especially
for suggesting the use of GAMM.
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