The Metaphor Cognitive Mechanism Research Of Users Based On Symbol System Of Web Interface

The study for metaphors has a long history. However, such study was once restricted within the field of rhetoric research over a long period. Since the 1980s, the foreign researchers have suceessively put forward a series of theories concerning metaphorical cognition, and thus expanded its scope from linguistics into the whole cognitive science whose purpose is to reveal the law of man's thinking. Studying the metaphorical cognitive theory from the aspect of cognitive effect, which is meaningful to know the cognitive law of the customer in the web site and also offer a new way to solve issues during information architecture. This paper focuses on researching metaphorical cognitive theory based on symbol system of web interface.Firstly, this paper defined the concept of metaphor, made conclusions of the studying situation home and abroad, found out that metaphor had transferred from traditional rhetoric to cognitive science, and applied in web interface design, web technology and many other fields. This paper collected related theories of metaphorical cognition, and designed three experiments to explore metaphorical cognition of users. The 1^st experiment analyzed the output of metaphor and observed the process of metaphor construction when the users were subject to the stimulus of target and vocabulary. The 2^nd experiment tested learning effect of target concept for the freshmen, and proved the influence of metaphor in learning. The 3^rd experiment investigated the metaphor element in the web interface and explored the understanding of metaphorization web interface by the users.This paper proved that many people had used metaphorical cognitive thinking pattern when comprehend abstract concept, and those who were not familiar with the concept of target were more preferred to use metaphor to comprehend. Metaphor had influence on most freshmen, and found out that metaphor element design in the web interface had better vision effect, could draw more attention of users' and more impressed, but there was almost no difference in improving comprehension.