title: Spoken idiom recognition: meaning retrieval and word expectancy.
abstract: This study investigates recognition of spoken idioms occurring in neutral contexts. Experiment 1 showed that both predictable and non-predictable idiom meanings are available at string offset. Yet, only predictable idiom meanings are active halfway through a string and remain active after the string's literal conclusion. Experiment 2 showed that the initial fragment of a predictable idiom inhibits recognition of a word providing a congruous, but literal, conclusion to the expression. No comparable effects were obtained with non-predictable idioms. These findings are consistent with the view that spoken idiom identification differs from word recognition and occurs word-by-word, just as with other familiar, multi-lexical phrases.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Trieste, 34134 Trieste, Italy. tabossi@univ.trieste.it
authors.forename: Patrizia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tabossi
authors.forename: Rachele
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fanari
authors.forename: Kinou
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wolf
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014825:Vocabulary