Get the Message: Idiom Decomposability Does Not Affect Reading Times When Reading Idioms in Discourse

How are idioms processed and represented in an extended discourse? The current study uses a repetition paradigm to investigate idiom processing within a text by exploring if the meaning of an idiomatic phrase that is selected for the discourse-level representation facilitates processing of a subsequent encounter with the idiom. Participants read 11-sentence passages containing decomposable (e.g., do your homework) or non-decomposable (e.g., have a ball) idioms that were presented either once (control condition) or twice (repeated conditions) within the passage. The passages were written to support the figurative or literal meaning of the idiom phrase during the first and second occurrence. In the repeated conditions, the meaning of the idiom either stayed the same (consistent condition) across encounters or changed (switched condition) across encounters. Reading time on the second encounter with the idiom (or first encounter in the control condition) served as the dependent variable. There was a significant main effect of meaning condition, such that idioms in the switched meaning condition took longer to read than idioms in the consistent meaning condition. No main effect or significant interactions with idiom decomposability were found. The pattern of results suggest that idiom decomposability is task dependent (i.e., does not occur in tasks such as self-paced reading that do not direct attention toward idiom processing) or is a linguistic artifact. Finding slower reading times in the switched meaning condition may support the conclusion that the unselected meaning (the contextually inappropriate meaning) of an idiom is less activated, or even inhibited, after meaning selection occurs. Models of idiom comprehension need to address further how idiom meaning is represented in the discourse as well as the role inhibition may play.