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Does Figurative Language Present a Unique Comprehension Problem?

In order to investigate whether or not the interpretation of figurative passages presented a comprehension problem unique to that of any difficult text, 50 undergraduate education majors were asked to read and interpret a nonliteral comparison passage and two researcher-constructed figurative passages. Subjects took pretests to measure their general vocabulary knowledge and inferencing ability. Performance on these measures was compared with abilities considered unique to the comprehension of figurative expressions. A set of quantitative analyses indicated that the figurative-unique abilities could not definitively account for the interpretation of both figurative passages. However, an additional qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with 10 of the subjects indicated that figurative unique abilities identified in previous research with isolated figurative expressions were operating during the interpretation of the figurative passages used in this study. The study illustrates the benefit of combining quantitative and qualitative methods to answer basic research questions about text comprehension.