Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Gerrig, Richard J. | Samuel, Arthur | Levy, Sheri | Connell, Paul.

Date

2017-08-01

Keywords

Context | Cognitive psychology | Exaggeration | Hyperbole | Literal | Speaker

Department

Department of Experimental Psychology.

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/78142

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

People are exposed to exaggeration in some form every day. They must comprehend and interpret the hyperbole, or conversational overstatement, to which they are exposed. In a series of experiments, we presented participants with texts containing information described in a literal or hyperbolic manner (e.g. | “I caught a fish” vs. “I caught a fish the size of a whale”). The experiments used three measures to examine the impact of hyperbole. First, we asked participants to make explicit estimates of quantities in reference to literal and hyperbolic versions of the same utterances. Second, we asked participants to read stories that presented outcomes that were consistent or inconsistent with those explicit estimates. Third, we tested participants’ memory for the content of those stories. We found that the presence of hyperbole had a reliable impact on participants’ quantity estimates. Although the majority of evidence suggested that participants produced the expected consistency effects, the memory effects did not parallel those explicit estimates. | 93 pages

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