The Dual Metaphorical Representation Of The Concept Of Difficulty And Its Influence On The Judgment Of Difficulty

The concept of difficulty refers to an abstract lexical concept that expresses something that is difficult or easy to accomplish.People in real life need to face a variety of tasks,each person feels the difficulty is different,the difficulty also has a different understanding.In the theoretical study of conceptual metaphor,we find that concrete concepts can help us understand abstract concepts,so in order to better understand this abstract concept,this study first introduces the definition of conceptual metaphor and summarizes the role of conceptual metaphor,then combs its Research Paradigm and Related Empirical Research,finally elaborates the definition of difficult concept and combs the related research,starting with the relationship between the concept of difficulty and the perception of soft and hard,the paper discusses the metaphorical representation of the concept of difficulty by designing three experiments.The study 1,To explore whether there are metaphorical representations of hard and soft,and metaphorical representations of light and heavy on the conscious level of difficult and easy concepts.In Experiment 1A,participants were asked to match difficult and easy words with pictures of hard objects（stone）or soft objects（cotton）.The results showed that the subjects tended to match difficult words with stones and easy words with cotton.In Experiment 1B,participants were asked to place difficult words and easy words on one side of the scale or on the other side.The results showed that the subjects tended to place the difficult words on the side of the balance and the easy words on the side of the balance.In study 2,we explore whether the concept of difficulty has the metaphorical representation of hardness,softness and lightness at the unconscious level.In Experiment 2A,SA-IAT was used to explore the soft and hard metaphorical representation of difficult and easy concepts at the unconscious level.The results showed that the response time of the difficult words and the hard attributive words was significantly faster than that of the easy words and the hard attributive words.In Experiment 2B,the Semantic Priming Paradigm was used to explore the metaphorical representation of difficult and easy concepts at unconscious level.The results showed that the response time of consistent condition was significantly faster than that of inconsistent condition,and the interaction between the pair of initiators and the direction of balance was significant,the response time of the initiators to the difficult situation is faster than that of the initiators to the difficult situation,the response time of the priming word to the difficult situation is faster than that of the priming word to the difficult situation.In Study 3,we used the embodied method to explore whether the soft,hard,light and heavy perception could affect the participants’ task judgment.In Experiment 3A,two groups of subjects were given a soft ball and a hard ball to activate their soft and hard perception.The results showed that compared with the subjects who squeezed the hard ball,the subjects who squeezed the soft ball found the puzzle task easier.In Experiment 3B,two groups of subjects started their perception of weight by holding a file box with different weights in their hands.It was found that the subjects holding a file box with light-weight felt the material in the file box more easily than those holding a file box with heavy weight.To sum up,three experiments have confirmed that there is a metaphorical connection between the concept of difficulty and the degree of difficulty,the degree of difficulty and the degree of difficulty.