When the Idiom Advantage Comes Up Short: Eye-Tracking Canonical and Modified Idioms

Abstract

The literature on idioms often talks about an “idiom advantage,” such that familiar idioms (spill the beans) are generally processed faster than comparable literal phrases (burn the beans). More recently, researchers have explored the processing of idiom modification and while a few studies indicate that familiarity benefits the processing of modified forms, the extent of this facilitation is unknown. In an eye-tracking study, we explored whether familiar idioms and modified versions with 1 or 2 adjectives {spill the [spicy, (red)] beans} are processed faster than matched literal phrases {burn the [spicy, (red)] beans} when both were preceded by a biasing context. The results showed that adjectives inserted in idioms induced longer fixations and were more likely to elicit a regression. However, idiom verbs and final words were processed with the same ease in all adjective conditions, implying that modifying idioms did not impede their processing. In contrast to the widely reported “idiom advantage,” the results demonstrated that canonical and modified idioms were slower to read relative to matched literal controls. This was taken to reflect the competition between an idiom’s literal and figurative meaning, and subsequently the need to select and integrate the contextually appropriate one. In contrast, meaning integration in literal, unambiguous phrases was easier. We argue that processing costs associated with meaning selection may only manifest when idioms are preceded by a biasing context that allows disambiguation to occur in the idiom region, and/or when literal control phrases are contextually appropriate and carefully matched to idioms. Thus, idiom recognition/activation may elicit the well attested idiom advantage, while meaning selection and integration may come at a cost, and idiom modifications may simply add to the cognitive load.

Ambiguity resolution in passivized idioms: Is there a shift in the most likely interpretation?

“…Interestingly, despite the unfamiliarity generated by the passive construction in our study (which led to overall faster processing of the literal meaning), we too found that figurative keywords were read significantly faster, and literal keywords significantly more slowly, as familiarity increased. Given that this construct reflected the degree of familiarity with the figurative meaning of an idiom, the results demonstrate that knowing an idiom well leads to greater activation of its idiomatic meaning, even if the phrase is encountered in a novel way (see also Kyriacou et al, 2020, 2021). Greater phrasal frequency also had a facilitative effect on the go-past reading time of keywords and on the total reading time of both keywords and idioms, but it did not interact with condition.…”

“…We hypothesized that the deviation from the established phrasal configuration would slow idiom recognition, delaying the retrieval of its figurative meaning while prioritizing the literal. This could explain why modified and specifically passivized idioms elicit a processing cost when intended in their figurative sense relative to their canonical forms (Kyriacou et al, 2020(Kyriacou et al, , 2021Mancuso et al, 2020). To investigate whether differences in activation of the literal and figurative meanings might account for this observed pattern, and to explore whether passivized idioms are recognized in the absence of preceding contextual bias, we designed an eye-tracking study using passivized idioms embedded in sentences, where the intended meaning became clear in a postidiom disambiguating (keyword) region.…”

“…This suggests that the figurative meaning was available since a strictly literal understanding of the phrases would have been just as contextually anomalous as the controls. Passivized idioms have also been found to prime target words related to their figurative meaning in phrasal decision tasks ( the bucket was kicked— DIE; Mancuso et al, 2020), and idioms modified by extra adjectives ( spill the spicy beans in a scenario involving the revelation of scandalous secrets) are understood figuratively (Kyriacou et al, 2021). In addition, although greater frequency and familiarity can aid the processing of modified idiom forms, just as in canonical versions, the figurative meaning appears to be available even for those that are less familiar and less frequent (Kyriacou et al, 2020).…”

“…This argument is not uncontested (see Foraker & Murphy, 2012;Klein & Murphy, 2002), and similar concerns have been raised about the robustness of the idiom superiority effect. Specifically, Kyriacou et al (2021) argued that an idiom advantage might be discernible only when idioms are compared to poorly matched literal phrases, and that studies focusing on the idiom region alone might have potentially missed processing costs emerging in other regions. Indeed, in line with the above argument, some evidence implying costly competition between the different meanings of a (canonical and familiar) idiom, comes from studies investigating how a respective meaning is integrated with postidiom context.…”

“…These factors have been found to also modulate the processing and acceptability ratings of modified idiom forms such as the bucket was kicked (Geeraert et al, 2017;Haeuser et al, 2021;Kyriacou et al, 2020Kyriacou et al, , 2021Mancuso et al, 2020;Mancuso & Laudanna, 2019;McGlone et al, 1994), but we currently do not know how the figurative versus the literal meaning of a modified idiom is activated, or integrated as part of longer discourse. In the present study, we explore ambiguity resolution in modified idioms during online reading.…”