Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT, Birmingham, UK.
School of Psychology and Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Mem Cognit. 2024 Feb;52(2):334-351. doi: 10.3758/s13421-023-01463-x. Epub 2023 Sep 19.
Language users routinely use canonical, familiar idioms in everyday communication without difficulty. However, creativity in idiom use is more widespread than sometimes assumed, and little is known about how we process creative uses of idioms, and how individual differences in cognitive skills contribute to this. We used eye-tracking while reading and cross-modal priming to investigate the processing of idioms (e.g., play with fire) compared with creative variants (play with acid) and literal controls (play with toys), amongst a group of 47 university-level native speakers of English. We also conducted a series of tests to measure cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, inhibitory control, and processing speed). Eye-tracking results showed that in early reading behaviour, variants were read no differently to literal phrases or idioms but showed significantly longer overall reading times, with more rereading required compared with other conditions. Idiom variables (familiarity, decomposability, literal plausibility) and individual cognitive variables had limited effects throughout, although more decomposable phrases of all kinds required less overall reading time. Cross-modal priming-which has often shown a robust idiom advantage in past studies-demonstrated no difference between conditions, but decomposability again led to faster processing. Overall, results suggest that variants were treated more like literal phrases than novel metaphors, with subsequent effort required to make sense of these in the way that was consistent with the context provided.
语言使用者在日常交流中经常毫不费力地使用规范、熟悉的习语。然而，习语的创造性使用比人们想象的更为普遍，我们对如何处理创造性的习语用法以及认知技能的个体差异如何对此做出贡献知之甚少。我们使用眼动追踪技术和跨模态启动来研究习语（例如，玩火）与创造性变体（玩酸）和字面控制（玩玩具）的处理方式，研究对象是一组 47 名具有大学英语水平的英语母语者。我们还进行了一系列测试来衡量认知能力（工作记忆容量、抑制控制和处理速度）。眼动追踪结果表明，在早期阅读行为中，变体与字面短语或习语的阅读方式没有不同，但总体阅读时间明显更长，与其他条件相比，需要更多的重读。习语变量（熟悉度、可分解性、字面合理性）和个体认知变量在整个过程中都有一定的影响，尽管各种可分解的短语都需要更少的总体阅读时间。跨模态启动——在过去的研究中经常表现出强大的习语优势——在不同条件下没有差异，但可分解性再次导致更快的处理。总的来说，结果表明变体的处理方式更像是字面短语，而不是新的隐喻，需要后续努力才能以与提供的上下文一致的方式理解这些短语。
