Conventionality and context jointly modulate the effect of inhibitory control on L2 metaphor comprehension

The Structure Building Framework has suggested that inhibitory control plays an important role in metaphor comprehension, yet it remains less clear how the role varies with different types of L2 metaphors in the absence or presence of context. We used a modified flanker task to measure the inhibitory control ability of Chinese-English bilinguals who were divided into two groups: high inhibitory control (HIC) and low inhibitory control (LIC). They performed semantic judgment tasks in which L2 conventional and novel metaphors were presented in isolated sentences (Experiment 1), and the same metaphors were preceded by supportive or literal contexts (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, the HIC group responded significantly slower than the LIC group to novel metaphors, with no obvious distinction between the groups for conventional metaphors. In Experiment 2, the HIC group performed significantly faster on novel metaphors in supportive contexts than in literal contexts, while the LIC group had no such facilitative effect. However, the LIC group’s response to conventional metaphors was greatly facilitated by supportive contexts, whereas the HIC group showed no significant difference in two context conditions. These results suggest that inhibitory control is selectively recruited in the comprehension of L2 conventional and novel metaphors under different contextual demands. This finding provides a comprehensive account of the flexible role of inhibitory control in L2 metaphor comprehension.