Activation of Literal Word Meanings in Idioms: Evidence from Eye-tracking and ERP Experiments.
Ruth Kessler, Andrea Weber, Claudia K Friedrich
PMID 32715872WHAT IT FOUND
When listening to familiar idioms, the brain briefly activates the literal meaning of the final word before it is spoken.
This happens in speech but not in reading. The effect is short-lived and disappears quickly. These findings describe normal language processing in healthy adults.
Key findings
01In the eye-tracking experiment, participants fixated on semantic associates of the idiom's final word before the word was spoken, indicating that literal meanings are activated during prediction.
02In the auditory ERP experiment, semantic associates elicited a reduced N400 amplitude compared to unrelated words, showing facilitated processing of predicted literal meanings in spoken language.
03In the visual ERP experiment, no significant difference was found between semantic associates and unrelated words in the N400 time window, suggesting this activation does not occur or is too brief to measure in reading.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used only healthy, young, native German-speaking adults, so results may not generalize to older adults, non-native speakers, or clinical populations. The semantic activation effect was very brief and only found in auditory processing, making it difficult to observe in other contexts. The study is a basic psycholinguistic investigation and does not test a clinical intervention or assess patient outcomes.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The work was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these findings apply to patients with language impairments. The study measured normal, automatic processing in healthy adults and did not test whether these mechanisms are preserved or broken in conditions like aphasia.