Do Patients With Depression Prefer Literal or Metaphorical Expressions for Internal States? Evidence From Sentence Completion and Elicited Production

Frontiers in Psychology
Christina KauschkeArne Nagels

Abstract

In everyday communication metaphoric expressions are frequently used to refer to abstract concepts, such as feelings or mental states. Patients with depression are said to prefer literal over figurative language, i.e. they may show a concreteness bias. Given that both emotional functioning and the processing of figurative language may be altered in this clinical population, our study aims at investigating whether and how these dysfunctions are reflected in the understanding and production of metaphorical expressions for internal states. We used two behavioral approaches: a sentence completion task and elicited speech production. In the first experiment, patients with ICD 10 depression (n = 26) and healthy controls (n = 32) were asked to complete sentences by selecting an appropriate word out of four alternatives (metaphorical expression, literal expression, concrete distractor, abstract distractor). All participants-irrespective of the presence of depression-chose more literal (60%) than metaphorical (40%) expressions. In the second experiment, patients with depression (n = 44) and healthy controls (n = 36) described pictures showing emotive events. The descriptions were transcribed and coded for type of expression (non-figurat...Continue Reading

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