2025/01/01 by Martina Montalti, Valentina Cuccio · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Language, Metaphor, and Cognition #Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
paper · doi:10.1525/collabra.147305
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/12/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Schizophrenic patients struggle with figurative language, interpreting non-literal expressions in a literal way. This tendency, called concretism, is considered a schizophrenia core symptom. Despite being well-documented, concretism lacks a comprehensive review on methodological aspects, like stimuli and experimental designs. Following PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a literature review on behavioural studies comparing the comprehension of metaphorical and literal sentences between schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Findings are limited and controversial, with only 12 articles identified. Studies show a substantial heterogeneity in stimuli and experimental designs. Notably, concretism was observed in only two studies, reflected in accuracy measures, but not reaction times. This review highlights a serious replicability issue, characterized by two intertwined factors. First, insufficient information provided by studies prevents their replication. Second, the lack of dedicated replication experiments, further complicates the findings validation. This considerable methodological heterogeneity likely leads to the involvement of different cognitive mechanisms in task performance, making findings difficult to compare. Although it was not our primary aim, we observed that concretism was not supported by findings which reveal only an overall linguistic impairment. Concretism, traditionally identified in relation to proverbs, has expanded to encompass all forms of figurative language, leading to a case of Epistemic Injustice, i.e., the potentially inaccurate presumption that schizophrenic patients interpret all figurative language literally. This conclusion should not be interpreted as evidence that concretism does not exist, but rather that current literature has yet to consistently and robustly demonstrate its presence.