exploring individual differences in recognizing idiomatic

Exploring individual differences in recognizing idiomatic expressions in context

Mesian Tilmatine1,2, Ferdy Hubers2, & Florian Hintz3*

1Free University Berlin, Berlin, DE

2Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL

3Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, NL

--------------------------In press at Journal of Cognition--------------------------

Running title: Idiomatic expressions in context

Keywords: idiomatic expressions; individual differences; self-paced reading

*Corresponding author:

Florian Hintz

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

P.O. Box 310

6500 AH Nijmegen

The Netherlands

[email protected]

The archived materials, analysis scripts, logfiles and results can be found here:

https://hdl.handle.net/1839/5005965b-f11f-4c7a-a82d-ad6f6b6e58d4


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Abstract

Written language comprehension requires readers to integrate incoming information with stored

mental knowledge to construct meaning. Literally plausible idiomatic expressions can activate both

figurative and literal interpretations, which convey different meanings. Previous research has shown

that contexts biasing the figurative or literal interpretation of an idiom can facilitate its processing.

Moreover, there is evidence that processing of idiomatic expressions is subject to individual

differences in linguistic knowledge and cognitive-linguistic skills. It is therefore conceivable that

individuals vary in the extent to which they experience context-induced facilitation in processing

idiomatic expressions. To explore the interplay between reader-related variables and contextual

facilitation, we conducted a self-paced reading experiment. We recruited participants who had recently

completed a battery of 33 behavioural tests measuring individual differences in linguistic knowledge,

general cognitive skills and linguistic processing skills. In the present experiment, a subset of these

participants read idiomatic expressions that were either presented in isolation or preceded by a

figuratively or literally biasing context. We conducted analyses on the reading times of idiom-final

nouns and the word thereafter (spill-over region) across the three conditions, including participants’

scores from the individual differences battery. Our results showed no main effect of the preceding

context, but substantial variation between readers and variation in contextual facilitation. We

encourage interested researchers to exploit the present dataset for follow-up studies on individual

differences in idiom processing.

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Introduction

To understand sentences and discourse properly, readers must know facts about the world and

the plausibility of a described situation. In some cases, retrieving and combining the meaning of

individual words is not sufficient to activate the meaning intended by a sentence or discourse. That is,

there are cases where fixed sequences of words, also known as instances of formulaic language, carry

a meaning that does not emerge from its constituent words and that differ from the literal interpretation

of the word sequence (Abel, 2003).

A prominent type of fixed word sequences are idiomatic expressions (Wray & Perkins, 2000).

Previous research on idioms has shown that they are often processed faster than regular expressions,

because they are well-known, pre-established sequences of words that can be predicted (Tabossi,

Fanari & Wolf, 2009). An extensive debate in the field has concerned the mental representation and

processing of idioms. According to the ‘lexical representation hypothesis’, the meaning of idiomatic

expressions is represented as a single unit rather than being composed ‘on the fly’ (Bobrow & Bell,

1973; Swinney & Cutler, 1979; Gibbs, 1980). In contrast, compositional approaches assume that each

constituent word contributes to the meaning of an idiomatic expression (Gibbs & O’Brien, 1990;

Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1991, McGlone, Glucksberg, & Cacciari, 1994). Finally, hybrid models (e.g.,

Titone and Connine, 1999), representing a mixture of lexical representation and compositional

accounts, have received a lot of empirical support and are nowadays widely accepted. Such models

assume that there are external forces (e.g., idiom frequency, discourse context, language user

characteristics) that act upon the precise nature of an idiom’s meaning activation. A good test case for

examining the predictions of idiom processing and storage accounts are ‘literally plausible

expressions’.

Literally plausible idiomatic expressions, such as ‘to play with fire’, are cases where both the

literal (playing with fire) and the figurative (taking a risk) meaning of the expression are frequently

used. It has been shown that in order to select the intended meaning from the two alternatives, readers

make use of context, which may bias either the figurative or the literal interpretation (Cacciari &

Tabossi, 1988; Holsinger, 2013).

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Beck and Weber (2020) conducted a self-paced reading study to investigate the effects of

context on the processing of idiomatic expressions. Their participants read idioms embedded in

sentences that varied in how literally plausible the idiom was and in whether the preceding context

was figuratively or literally biasing. The idioms were followed by a resolution phrase that indicated

whether the intended reading was figurative or literal. An example item with consistent resolution

phrases is given in (1): the biasing context is in italics, the idiom is bold font, and the resolution phrase

is underlined. Their results showed that both types of context facilitated processing when the

resolution phrase was consistent with the intended figurative or literal interpretation as compared to

when it was inconsistent. However, contexts biasing a literal interpretation facilitated processing only

in idioms that had a high potential for a literal interpretation.

(1) a. The fearless climber, who was on a climb alone in the mountains, was ready to play with

fire with any risk if necessary later on.

b. The young camper, who was already bored without any of his friends, was ready to play

with fire from the grill if necessary later on.

Individuals vary substantially in their ability to use language (Dąbrowska, 2018; Kidd et al.,

2018). A recent report demonstrated that fluid and crystallized and intelligence predicted the

comprehension of metaphors (Stamenković, Ichien, & Holyoak, 2019), a form of figurative language.

It is therefore conceivable that language users also differ in their ability to process idiomatic

expressions.

In a first step towards exploring skills that underlie individual differences in idiom processing,

Cacciari, Corrardini, and Ferlazzo (2018) conducted a cross-modal priming experiment. Their

participants heard idioms embedded in a sentence context that biased the figurative interpretation of

the idiom. Following auditory presentation, a written target word that was semantically related to the

idiom appeared on the screen. Participants performed a lexical decision task on the written word. The

underlying assumption was that participants who recognize an idiom quickly respond faster to the

semantically related target word due to spreading activation. Cacciari and colleagues tested whether

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variability in lexical decision times could be explained by measures of participants’ non-verbal

processing speed, inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, crystallized and fluid

intelligence, and personality traits. In terms of linguistic and general cognitive skills, their analyses

showed positive effects of working memory, inhibitory control and crystallized verbal intelligence on

lexical decision times (i.e., reflected in shorter RTs).

In sum, previous research has shown that processing is facilitated when idioms are embedded

in contexts biasing either a figurative or a literal interpretation—in the latter case, only if the idiom is

literally plausible. Moreover, there is evidence from a cross-modal priming paradigm for individual

differences in idiom processing, which have been related to differences in linguistic and general

cognitive skills.

One open question resulting from this body of research concerns the extent to which

contextual facilitation in idiom processing is subject to individual differences. That is, given the results

by Beck and Weber (2020) demonstrating facilitatory effects of context on self-paced reading times as

well as the individual differences data by Cacciari et al. (2018), it is likely that there is considerable

individual variation in how figuratively and literally biasing contexts affect readers’ processing of

idiomatic expressions. The present study addressed this question. We ran a self-paced reading

experiment via the internet using Dutch idioms selected from the normative idiom database by Hubers

et al. (2018, 2019). Next to their figurative meaning, all idioms had a high potential for being

interpreted literally. The idioms were embedded in short sentences. Our analyses focused on the

reading times of the idiom-final noun, the most meaning-bearing element in the fixed expression (see

Rommers et al., 2013; e.g., the word ‘fire’ in (1)). To allow for analyses of spill-over effects (Mitchell,

1994), we added a neutral adverb to follow the idiom-final noun, which marked the end of the

sentence. Participants read the sentences word by word in a non-cumulative, stationary window, self-

paced fashion. Importantly, each participant read each idiom in all of the three conditions: without a

preceding context (to assess the baseline reading time), or preceded by either a figuratively or literally

biasing context. This within-participants manipulation enabled us to determine for each participant to

what extent context affected their reading of the idiom. Moreover, since the experiment was conducted

via the internet, we expected large variation between participants pertaining to the speed of their

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internet connection and the quality of their hardware (e.g., keyboard polling rate). We reasoned that a

within-participants design would mitigate these sources of noise as hardware-related noise should be

constant across conditions. On the other hand, repeating the same idiom twice within a participant –

albeit that the order of conditions was counterbalanced across lists – might affect their processing of

the idiom. We therefore offer two analyses—one based on the first encounter an idiom (in one of the

three conditions), and one based on the full dataset (including the two item reputations, Appendix C).

In general, we want to stress that the primary goal of this data report is to provide a brief motivation

and sample analysis for the present data. Interested researchers may further exploit the dataset for

targeted and/or exploratory analyses.

Our participants were native speakers of Dutch, who had recently taken part in a large-scale

individual-differences study where they completed 33 tests measuring linguistic and general cognitive

skills (Hintz et al., 2020). Hintz et al. (2020) used a latent-variable approach with multiple tests

tapping into the same cognitive construct. For the present analyses, we selected 19 of the 33 tests1 that

appeared relevant in the context of present study (cf. Cacciari et al., 2018). Specifically, the selected

tests tapped into five cognitive constructs: (1) Linguistic experience, (2) Non-verbal processing speed,

(3) Visual working memory, (3) Non-verbal intelligence, (4) Word reading skills, and (5) Predictive

sentence comprehension skills. We used principal component analysis to derive one score for each of

the 112 participants and each construct to be used in the analyses predicting idiom-final word and

spill-over reading times.

We predicted that compared to the condition where idioms were read in isolation, figuratively

and literally biasing contexts should lead to faster reading of idiom-final and spill-over words (Beck &

Weber, 2020). The crucial question was if and how individual differences in linguistic and general

cognitive skills affect idiom processing in context. While readers with higher levels of non-verbal

processing speed, non-verbal intelligence, and word reading skills may have a general processing

advantage (affecting reading times in all three conditions) over readers with lower scores on these

tests, the influence of visual working memory may be restricted to both context conditions. That is,

1 As for the present data, all data collected by Hintz et al. (2020) are publicly available. Thus, if researchers

would like to include additional/different individual-differences variables, they may download the data from UK

Data Archive: https://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/854399/.

https://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/854399/

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readers with larger visual working memory capacity may remember and use preceding contexts more

efficiently than readers with lower capacities. Similarly, readers with extensive linguistic experience

(e.g., vocabulary size, reading frequency) may have encountered idioms in a variety of different

contexts and may thus be faster at processing idioms in contexts than readers with less linguistic

experience. Finally, readers with better prediction skills during sentence comprehension may be able

to exploit the preceding contexts more efficiently for generating predictions about upcoming idiom-

final words than readers with worse prediction skills.

Method

Principal component analyses of linguistic and general cognitive skills

Before running the present study, we conducted a principal component analysis (using SPSS, version

27) on the test scores provided by Hintz et al. (2020). That is, for each of the five constructs (linguistic

knowledge, processing speed, visual working memory, sentence comprehension and prediction skills,

word reading skills), we tested how strongly the tests assumed to measure a given construct loaded on

its factor and how much variance was explained (Table 1; see Appendix A for descriptive statistics

and reliability measures of each included test and Figure 1 for correlations between the predictor

variables). The scores from Raven’s advanced progressive matrices test served as the measure of non-

verbal intelligence. We selected ‘oblimin rotation’ and extracted regression-based factor scores.

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Table 1: Linguistic and general cognitive constructs: Factor loadings and variance explained.

Construct n Expl. variance Included tests Loading

Linguistic knowledge 112 58%

Peabody picture vocabulary 0.84

Spelling 0.75

Dutch Author recognition 0.82

Idiom recognition 0.54

Prescriptive grammar 0.83

Processing speed 107 53%

Auditory simple reaction time 0.71

Auditory choice reaction time 0.83

Letter comparison 0.48

Visual simple reaction time 0.74

Visual choice reaction time 0.81

Visual working memory 106 30%

Corsi block clicking forward 0.82

Corsi block clicking backward 0.85

Sentence comprehension

and prediction skills

105 55%

Gender cue activation 0.91

Verb semantics activation 0.91

Word reading skills 99 40%

Klepel 0.75

One-minute 0.83

Maximal speech rate 0.63

Phonological verbal fluency 0.72

Participants

We contacted the same 112 native Dutch participants who had previously taken part in the

study by Hintz and colleagues (2020) and invited them to take part in the present study. Forty-three of

them replied and participated in the self-paced reading experiment. They were paid €6. All participants

gave informed consent prior to participation. The ethics board of the Faculty of Social Sciences at

Radboud University (Nijmegen, NL) provided ethical approval to conduct the study. Two of the

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participants were excluded from further analyses (Data pre-processing and analysis section); the

remaining 41 participants were on average 22.88 years old (SD = 2.8, range = 18-29; 9 male).

Figure 1: Correlations between individual differences predictors.

Materials

We selected 25 idiomatic expressions from the Dutch normative database by Hubers et al.

(2018, 2019). We embedded the idiomatic expressions in a carrier sentence (see (2) for an example;

context in italics, idioms in bold, see Appendix B for all items). Note that the idiom-final noun never

occurred in sentence-final position to avoid strategic processing effects and to enable spill-over

analyses. This was achieved by adding a semantically neutral word to the sentences.

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Each of the 25 target sentences was presented in three conditions: in isolation, preceded by a

figuratively biasing context, and preceded by a literally biasing context, amounting to 75 experimental

trials containing an idiom. The context sentences were taken from two previous Dutch studies (van

Wonderen, Hubers, & Dijkstra, in prep.; van Ginkel, 2019) or created anew:

(2) a. In deze boekenwinkel heb ik laatst dat mooie boek gevonden. Ik tikte hem op de kop toen.

Transl.: In this bookstore, I recently found that nice book. I made a good deal that time.

b. Die hond heeft laatst mijn schoenen kapotgebeten. Ik tikte hem op de kop toen.

Transl.: That dog recently bit my shoes to pieces. I tapped him on the head that time.

In addition to the experimental materials, we created 75 non-idiomatic filler items. Twenty-

five of which were preceded by a context. Thus, there was an even number of trials with and without

context in the experiment. Finally, we created 30 comprehension questions that followed 20% of the

experimental and filler trials, which were included to ensure that participants kept focus.

All 50 experimental and 25 filler trials with preceding contexts were tested for plausibility in a

rating study conducted via the internet (within the Pavlovia web environment, Peirce et al., 2019),

involving 56 Dutch native speakers who were paid €4 for participation. These participants did not take

part in the main experiment or the study by Hintz et al. (2020). Participants were asked to judge how

well the second sentence (e.g., containing the ambiguous idiom) followed-up on the figuratively or

literally biasing context (Dutch: ‘Hoe goed volgt de tweede zin op de eerste?’). They responded to the

question by selecting a number on a 7-point Likert scale (ranging from 1, not well at all, to 7, very

well). The mean plausibility rating for the fifty experimental context-target sentence pairs was 4.37

(SD = 1.29, range: 1.47 to 6.17). The 25 trials with figuratively biasing contexts had an average

plausibility rating of M = 5.24 (SD = 0.78, range: 3.17 to 6.17); average plausibility rating of the 25

literally biasing contexts was M = 3.50 (SD = 1.10, range: 1.74 to 6.00).

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Procedure

The experiment was programmed in jsPsych (de Leeuw, 2015) within the Pavlovia web

environment (Peirce et al., 2019), and run via the internet in participants’ browser. We created an

experimental list by shuffling the 75 filler items with the list of 75 experimental items. The 75

experimental items consisted of the 25 sentences with ambiguous idiomatic expressions, presented in

the three context conditions. We pseudo-randomized the order of the 150 trials and controlled that

there were minimally 10 trials in between two versions of the same idiom. Finally, we created five

additional versions of that list by counter-balancing the order of context conditions for the

experimental trials. That is, the lists varied in the order in which the context versions of a given idiom

were presented (e.g., neutral first, figurative context second, literal context third). The participants

were assigned to one of the six experimental lists. They consented to taking part by ticking off a

designated box. Participants were instructed to read the sentences silently as fast as possible while still

being able to comprehend their contents.

Context sentences were presented for the participant to read in one instance. There was no

time limit. Participants initiated the presentation of the target sentence by pressing the enter key. After

an interval of 500 ms, a fixation cross appeared for 500 ms, followed by the presentation of the first

word. Participants advanced to the next word by pressing the space bar. Reaction time for each word

was calculated as the difference between word presentation and button press. Content questions were

presented immediately after the last word in a sentence. Participants responded to the question by

pressing the keys J (yes-response) and N (no-response). After thirty trials, participants could take a

break. The inter-trial interval was 500 ms.

Data pre-processing and analysis

We used R (version. 3.5.1, R Core Team, 2018), and the libraries lme4 (Bates et al., 2015),

lmerTest (Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2017), effects (Fox, 2003), ggplot2 (Wickham,

2016), and performance (Lüdecke et al., 2020), to pre-process and analyse the data. Two participants

were excluded, because their accuracy on the comprehension questions was lower than 75% (65% and

71%), while all other participants scored substantially higher (M = 94,77%; SD = 4.23). Data cleaning

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for the remaining 41 participants was performed on the idiom-final nouns and spill-over words

separately. In line with previous studies (Marsden et al., 2018; Prasad & Linzen, 2019), we excluded

words with reading times shorter than 100 ms and larger than 2000 ms from further analysis. This led

to the exclusion of less than 1% of the data in both analyses. Note that the following analysis was

conducted on the basis of the first encounter of an idiom (in one of the three conditions). For an

analysis of the full dataset, we refer the reader to Appendix C.

In separate models, we analysed the cleaned reading times of the idiom-final and spill-over

words using linear mixed effects regression analyses. The reading times were log-transformed to

correct for a right skew in the data. The three-level factor context (no context, figuratively biasing

context, literally biasing context) was coded using simple contrast coding (UCLA Statistical

Consulting Group, 2011). With simple contrast coding, the reference level is always coded as −1/3,

and the level that it is compared to is coded as 2/3. This way of coding is similar to treatment contrast

coding, but has the advantage that the intercept corresponds to the grand mean instead of

corresponding to the mean of the reference level. Moreover, factors outside of interactions can be

interpreted as main effects. As continuous predictor variables, we included linguistic knowledge,

visual working memory, processing speed, non-verbal IQ, word reading skills, sentence

comprehension and prediction skills, as well as length (number of letters) and frequency (Keuleers et

al., 2010) of the idiom-final noun/spill-over word and the idiom's transparency rating (Hubers et al.,

2018, 2019). All participant-related and item-related predictors were mean-centred and standardized.

We included random intercepts for items and participants. Adding any type of random slopes to the

model resulted in overfit.

Results

The average reading times and standard deviations of the idiom-final nouns and spill-over

words per context are presented in Table 2. Differences in reading times between both contexts were

very small for both the idiom-final nouns and the spill-over words. Similarly, the differences between

both context conditions and the no-context condition were small.

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Table 2: Average reading times and standard deviations (ms)

by context for the idiom final word and the spill-over word.

Context Idiom final noun Spill-over word

Mean SD Mean SD

None 364.93 178.44 418.97 209.46

Figuratively biasing 359.80 155.94 419.23 207.98

Literally biasing 356.45 155.28 414.28 189.95

The results of the linear mixed effects regression analysis on the reading times of the idiom-

final noun are presented in Table 3. This analysis revealed a significant main effect of Word reading as

well as two interactions: one between context and Visual working memory and one between context

and Processing speed. The main effect of Word reading was negative, suggesting that participants with

better word reading skills read the idiom-final nouns faster than participants with lower word reading

skills. The two interactions are visualized in Figures 2 and 3. Figure 2 suggests that participants with

high visual working memory capacity were slower at reading idiom-final nouns in the literally biasing

context compared to both neutral and figuratively biasing context conditions. Figure 3 suggests that

participants with high non-verbal processing speed abilities (i.e., lower RTs) were faster at reading

idiom-final nouns in the literally biasing context compared to the neutral condition.

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Table 3: Idiom-final noun regression model with logged RTs as dependent variable (the no-

context condition as the reference category).

Fixed effects β (SE) t p

Intercept 2.4830 (0.0567) 43.768 < 0.001 ***

Fig. biasing context (FBC) 0.0003 (0.0068) 0.049 0.961

Lit. biasing context (LBC) -0.0015 (0.0068) -0.216 0.829

Linguistic knowledge -0.0403 (0.025) -1.610 0.117

FBC × Ling. knowledge 0.0089 (0.0086) 1.032 0.302

LBC × Ling. knowledge 0.0101 (0.0085) 1.188 0.235

Visual working memory (WM) -0.0183 (0.0241) -0.758 0.454

FBC × Visual WM 0.0045 (0.0083) 0.540 0.589

LBC × Visual WM 0.0181 (0.0082) 2.195 0.028 *

Processing speed 0.0201 (0.0232) 0.865 0.393

FBC × Processing speed -0.0048 (0.0078) -0.622 0.534

LBC × Processing speed -0.0155 (0.0078) -1.997 0.046 *

Non-verbal IQ 0.0516 (0.0293) 1.763 0.087 .

FBC × Non-verbal IQ -0.0056 (0.0101) -0.554 0.580

LBC × Non-verbal IQ -0.0078 (0.0101) -0.779 0.436

Word reading -0.0623 (0.0221) -2.821 0.008 **

FBC × Word reading 0.0001 (0.0076) 0.009 0.993

LBC × Word reading 0.0115 (0.0075) 1.527 0.127

Sentence compr. & pred. (SPC) -0.0076 (0.0244) -0.312 0.757

FBC × SPC -0.0014 (0.0082) -0.169 0.866

LBC × SPC -0.0020 (0.0082) -0.239 0.811

Idiom transparency -0.010019 (0.01) -1.196 0.245

Idiom final noun frequency 0.0023 (0.0115) 0.204 0.840

Idiom final noun length 0.0065 (0.0089) 0.733 0.472

Random effects Variance SD

Participant 0.0164 0.128

Item 0.0019 0.043

Residual 0.0078 0.088

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Figure 2: The interaction between Context and Visual working memory for the idiom-final word. The

error bands represent the 95% confidence interval.

Figure 3: The interaction between Context and Visual working memory for the idiom-final word. The

error bands represent the 95% confidence interval.

The results of the linear mixed effects regression analysis of the spill-over word reading times

are presented in Table 4. As in the idiom-final noun analysis, a significant main effect of Word reading

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was observed, indicating that participants with better word reading skills were faster at reading the

spill-over word than participants with poorer word reading skills. No main effect of context or any

interactions involving context were observed.

Data discussion

In contrast to our hypotheses, we observed no main effect of context. However, as one would

expect, we observed that individuals with better word reading abilities read idiom-final and spill-over

words faster (in all three context conditions) than individuals with poorer word-reading skills. These

effects were seen in both types of analyses we conducted—based on the first encounter of a given item

(main analysis) and based on the full dataset (see Appendix C). While the fact that better reading

ability led to overall faster reading of idiom-final and spill-over words is not necessarily a novel

finding, it does demonstrate that the present self-paced reading experiment (conducted via the internet)

indeed picked up individual differences as measured in a different study, which was conducted almost

one year before the present experiment (Hintz et al., 2020).

In the analysis based on the first encounter of an item, we additionally observed evidence for

modulatory influences of visual working memory and non-verbal processing speed on reading idiom-

final targets in the literally biasing context (but not on no-context and figuratively biasing context)

condition: Individuals with better processing speed abilities read idiom-final nouns in that condition

faster than individuals with worse processing speed abilities, relative to the neutral condition,.

Moreover, readers with higher visual working memory capacities had longer RTs for idiom-final

nouns than readers with lower capacities. These effects suggest that participants were differentially

affected by idioms presented in contexts that biased the literal interpretation of an idiom’s constituent

words. One possible linking hypothesis for this data pattern is that individuals with better processing

speed abilities might have been able to link the preceding (‘deidiomatizing’) context to the unfolding

target sentence more quickly than individuals with lower processing speed abilities could. They were

thus faster and more efficient at switching off the idiomatic meaning, which led to faster target

processing. The inhibitory effect of visual working memory on target word processing is in contrast to

our hypotheses, which predicted that readers with larger visual working memory capacity should

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remember and use preceding contexts more efficiently than readers with lower capacities, leading to

faster target word processing. The opposite was the case and we cannot offer a good account for this

finding. Future users of the data resource could explore this finding in more detail and, for example,

conduct analyses where multiple individual-differences predictors (among others, visual working

memory) interact.

In general, from a statistics point of view, future research could explore different ways of

analyzing the data. One may, for example, fit regression models with different random-effect

structures than the one used in the present model. Similarly, further work could address whether and if

so, how, repeating the same idiom twice within participants affected their processing. That is, while

the main effects of Word reading were consistent across both types of analyses, the two interactions

involving the literally biasing context condition discussed above were not observed when item

repetitions were included. Instead, we saw effects of non-verbal IQ and linguistic knowledge (in

interaction with the literally biasing context condition; see Appendix C, for a more detailed

description).

In sum, the present data resource offers many exciting avenues for conducting additional

exploratory and/or targeted analyses, especially when linked to the dataset provided by Hintz et al.

(2020). We hope that researchers make use of it to advance the field of idiom processing and/or

individual differences. The data can be accessed at https://hdl.handle.net/1839/5005965b-f11f-4c7a-

a82d-ad6f6b6e58d4. Interested researchers need to create a free account with the Archive of the Max

Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics providing a user name, email address, their full name and

affiliation. Alternatively, in case their institution is part of one of the supported Identity Federations

(Shibboleth), which is the case for many academic/research institutions, interested individuals may

simply use their own institutional account to log in. Use of the data is confined to academic purposes.



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Table 4: Spill-over word regression model with logged RTs as the dependent variable (with the

no-context condition as the reference category).


Intercept 2.5070 (0.1409) 17.794 < 0.001 ***


Lit. biasing context (LBC) 0.0031 (0.0086) 0.360 0.719





FBC × Visual WM 0.0002 (0.0104) 0.016 0.987

LBC × Visual WM 0.0124 (0.0103) 1.203 0.229



LBC × Processing speed -0.0101 (0.0097) -1.044 0.297

Non-verbal IQ 0.0525 (0.0285) 1.840 0.075 .

FBC × Non-verbal IQ 0.0015 (0.0126) 0.117 0.907

LBC × Non-verbal IQ 0.0035 (0.0126) 0.274 0.784

Word reading -0.0591 (0.0215) -2.746 0.010 **

FBC × Word reading -0.0027 (0.0095) -0.281 0.779

LBC × Word reading -0.0048 (0.0095) -0.501 0.617


FBC × SPC -0.0040 (0.0103) -0.390 0.697

LBC × SPC 0.0003 (0.0103) 0.025 0.980


Spill-over word frequency 0.0019 (0.0246) 0.077 0.939

Spill-over word length 0.0105 (0.0071) 1.492 0.151



Item 0.0025 0.050

Residual 0.0121 0.110

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Acknowledgements

This study was performed while MT was enrolled as a Master’s student at Radboud University in

Nijmegen (NL) in their Cognitive Neuroscience program. We thank the Donders Institute for Brain,

Cognition and Behaviour for providing Pavlovia software licenses to run the web experiments. In

addition, we are grateful to Ton Dijkstra for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Part

of this work is based on the research program ‘Free Competition in the Humanities’ with project

number 360-70-510 NWO ISLA, which is financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for

Scientific Research (NWO). MT was funded by a grant within the ‘Empirical Study of Literature

Training Network’, funded by European Union Horizon 2020 (Marie Skłodowska-Curie, grant no.

860516). FloH was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO),

Gravitation grant ‘Language in Interaction’ (grant number 024.001.006).

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23

Appendix A - Descriptive statistics and reliability measures of each individual-differences test

Table A1: Descriptive statistics and reliability measures taken from Hintz et al. (2020).

Domain Test N Mean (SD) Range Skewness a Kurtosis a Internal

consistency

Retest

reliability f

Errors

(%)

Outliers (%)

S1 S2

Linguistic

Knowledge

Peabody picture vocabulary test 112 56 (25) 0 – 95 -0.43 -0.79 0.96 b 0.91 - -

Spelling test 112 0.56 (0.18) 0.1 – 0.93 -0.43 -0.37 0.83 c 0.85 - -

Dutch author recognition test 112 0.2 (0.12) -0.03 – 0.6 0.62 0.47 0.93 c 0.95 - -

Idiom recognition test 112 0.76 (0.13) 0.4 – 1 -0.33 0.03 0.53 c 0.78 - -

Prescriptive grammar test 112 0.69 (0.13) 0.4 – 1 0.04 -0.65 0.74 c 0.86 - -

General

cognitive skills

Auditory simple RT test 112 Log: 2.35 (0.08)

Raw: 235 (48)

Log: 2.2 – 2.65

Raw: 160 – 459 -1.36 d 3.1d 0.9 de 0.59 d - 0.85 1.21 d

Auditory choice RT test 112 Log: 2.6 (0.09)

Raw: 417 (100)

Log: 2.41 – 2.86

Raw: 263 – 799 -0.6 d 0.15 d 0.96 de 0.76 d 3.75 0.81 0.49 d

Letter comparison test 107 Log: 3.02 (0.08)

Raw: 1167 (251)

Log: 2.86 – 3.28

Raw: 748 – 2044 0.65 d 0.47 d 0.89 de 0.83 d 6.89 2.01 0.08 d

Visual simple RT test 112 Log: 2.37 (0.05)

Raw: 244 (33)

Log: 2.24 – 2.55

Raw: 179 – 358 -0.54 d 0.51 d 0.86 de 0.58 d - 0.49 1.88 d

Visual choice RT test 112 Log: 2.62 (0.07)

Raw: 439 (90)

Log: 2.5 – 2.86

Raw: 321 – 822 0.88 d 0.73 d 0.95 de 0.78 d 4.13 0.19 0.49 d

Visual

working

memory

Corsi block clicking test forward

Corsi block clicking test backward

111

108

8 (2)

7 (2)

3 – 12

3 – 12

-0.08

-0.04

0.25

-0.15

0.53 c

0.71 c

0.39

0.49

-

-

-

-

Word reading

skills

Verbal fluency phonology 112 16 (4) 3 – 30 0.15 0.55 - 0.71 - -

Maximal speech rate 106 Log: 3.60 (0.09)

Raw: 4028 (854)

Log: 3.39 – 3.82

Raw: 2458 – 6650 -0.24 -0.07 - 0.88 - -

One-minute test 111 90 (14) 56 – 116 -0.12 -0.57 0.46 c 0.79 - -

Klepel test 111 63 (12) 34 – 107 0.26 0.6 0.88 c 0.88 - -

Sentence

comprehension

and prediction

skills

Gender cue activation during

sentence comprehension 105 -588 (655) -1674 – 940 0.45 -0.95 0.88 e 0.88 1.6 0.25 0.82

Verb semantics activation during

sentence comprehension 112 -742 (673) -1701 – 1041 0.62 -0.72 0.86 e 0.76 0.96 0.65 0.68

See Usage Notes section for missing values in column ‘N’.

Values in S1 and S2 columns indicate the percentage of trials replaced during Stage 1 (trimming) and Stage 2 (outlier replacement) in the pre-processing pipeline. a Calculated based on aggregated performance indicators. b Internal consistency was calculated as Guttman’s Lambda-2 coefficient. c Internal consistency was calculated by adjusting split-half (odd–even) correlations with the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula. d Calculated based on log-transformed values. e Internal consistency was calculated as intra-class correlation coefficient 2 using the ‘psychometric’ package in R. f Test-retest reliability was operationalized as two-tailed Pearson’s correlation between performance on test days 1 and 2

24

Appendix B – Materials

Experimental items

Figurative context Literal context Target SPR idiom

(both lit./fig. translation) Associated question Mean Rating of plausibility

Figurative pair Literal pair

De oplichter heeft ons

geld afgetroggeld.

The swindler took

money from us.

De tuinman heeft het gazon

net gezaaid, dus mochten

we er niet overheen lopen.

The gardener had just sown

the lawn, so we were not

allowed to walk on it.

Hij leidde ons om de tuin

gisteren.

He led us around the garden

yesterday.

He fooled us yesterday.

[only in lit. cond.]:

Leidde de huismeester ons

om de tuin? (nee)

Did the housekeeper lead

us around the garden? (no)

5.36 3.5

Herman kan niet tegen

het zien van bloed.

Herman cannot stand

the sight of blood.

Met eten kun je die parkiet

altijd lokken.

You can always lure the

parakeet with food.

Hij ging meteen van zijn stokje

de vorige keer.

He immediately went off his

pole last time.

He immediately fainted last

time.

[only in fig. cond.]:

Kan Herman tegen het zien

van bloed? (nee)

Can Herman stand the

sight of blood? (no)

6.16 3.46

De leraar was snel boos.

The teacher was quick

to anger.

De kaars was snel

opgebrand.

The candle burned out

quickly.

Hij had een kort lontje

blijkbaar.

It had a short fuse, apparently.

He was temperamental,

apparently.

[only in neutral cond.]:

Had hij een kort lontje? (ja)

Did he have a short fuse?

(yes)

5.94 4.13

Zijn humeur was erg

slecht.

His mood was very bad.

Zijn pantoffels waren te

groot.

His house shoes were too

large.

Hij schoot steeds uit zijn slof

vanochtend.

He kept falling out of his

slipper this morning.


Waren zijn pantoffels te

groot? (ja)

5.90 3.25

25

He kept going off the rails this

morning.

Were his slippers too big?

(yes)

Het meisje wilde haar

ouders niet vertellen

waarom ze na moest

blijven.

The girl did not want to

tell her parents why she

was kept in detention

after school.

Moeder repareerde de gaten

in de truien van haar

kinderen.

Mother repaired the holes

in her children's jumpers.

Ze speldde hun iets op de

mouw toen.

She pinned something on their

sleeve then.

She lied then.

3.65 2.83

Eva is de laatste tijd

depressief.

Eva has been depressed

lately.

Tijdens het spelen op de

boerderij viel een van de

kinderen naar beneden.

While playing at the farm,

one of the children fell

down.

Ze zit diep in de put nu.

She is deep in the pit now.

She is in a dark place now.

5.52 3.71

De agent was in gesprek

met de verdachte.

The officer was talking

to the suspect.

De tandarts controleerde de

pijnlijke kies van de man.

The dentist controlled the

man's painful tooth.

Hij voelde hem aan de tand

gisteren.

He checked his tooth

yesterday.

He questioned him yesterday.


Was de agent in gesprek

met zijn baas? (nee)

Was the officer talking to

his superior? (no)

5.39 2.88

In deze boekenwinkel

heb ik laatst dat ene

mooie boek gevonden.

De hond van mijn ouders

heeft laatst mijn schoenen

kapot gebeten.

Ik tikte hem op de kop toen.

I tapped him on the head at the

time.


Was het boek duur? (nee)

4.55 4.33

26

I found that one

beautiful book in this

bookstore the other day.

My parents' dog recently

bit my shoes off.

I made a good deal at the time. Was the book expensive?

(no)

Zijn moeder bemoeit

zich erg met de keuzes

van haar kinderen.

His mother is very

meddlesome in her

children's choices.

De peuter speelt tijdens het

ontbijt altijd met haar eten.

The toddler always plays

with her food during

breakfast.

Ze heeft een vinger in de pap

helaas.

She has a finger in the mush,

unfortunately.

She is intrusive, unfortunately.


Heeft ze een vinger in de

pap? (ja)

Does she have a finger in

the mush? (yes)

Is she intrusive? (yes)

4.16 2.71

Jesse doet totaal niet

zijn best op het werk.

Jesse is not doing his

best at work at all.

De kleuter heeft een vieze

gewoonte.

The toddler has a nasty

habit.

Hij eet uit zijn neus soms.

He eats out of his nose

sometimes.

He is being lazy sometimes.

5.03 5.33

Die handelaar verkocht

gestolen fietsen tegen

hoge prijzen.

That dealer sold stolen

bicycles at high prices.

Het was nog erg donker in

de woonkamer omdat Geert

het licht niet aangezet had.

It was still very dark in the

living room because Geert

had not turned on the light.

Hij liep tegen de lamp

uiteindelijk.

He eventually ran into the

lamp.

He eventually was caught.


Was het donker in de

woonkamer? (ja)

Was it dark in the living

room? (yes)

5.07 4.13

De man doet niet lang

over het drinken van een

fles wijn.

De generaal wilde dat zijn

zoon ook het leger in zou

gaan.

The general wanted his son

to join the army too.

Hij maakte hem soldaat zo snel

het kon.

He made a soldier out of him

as quickly as he could.


Doet de man lang over het

drinken van een fles wijn?

(nee)

5.16 3.96

27

The man does not take

long to drink a bottle of

wine.

He emptied/finished it as

quickly as he could.

Does the man take long to

drink a bottle of wine? (no)

In het gezin bleef de

zachtaardige man op de

achtergrond.

In the family, the gentle

man remained in the

background.

De man lag in zijn stoel te

slapen op de boot.

The man was asleep in his

seat on the boat.

Zijn vrouw stond aan het roer

op dat moment.

His wife was at the helm at the

time.

His wife wore the britches at

the time.


Stond zijn dochter aan het

roer? (nee)

Was his daughter at the

helm? (no)

4.45 6.00

Jan liet Corine vroeger

altijd schrikken.

Jan used to startle

Corine.

Roy had gisteren meel

gehaald omdat Lisa wilde

gaan bakken.

Roy had fetched flour

yesterday because Lisa

wanted to bake.

Zij gaf hem een koekje van

eigen deeg nu.

She gave him a cookie of own

dough now.

She gave him a taste of her

own medicine now.

6.04 2.23

Wonderkind Jeanne

leerde wel drie nieuwe

talen tegelijkertijd.

Child prodigy Jeanne

learned as many as

three new languages at

the same time.

Karin moest na het ongeluk

een beenamputatie

ondergaan.

Karin had to undergo a leg

amputation after the

accident.

Zij kreeg die onder de knie

afgelopen week.

She got it/them under her

knees.

She mastered it/them last

week.

4.75 2.19

De ballerina deed

auditie voor de hoofdrol.

The ballerina auditioned

for the lead role.

De vrouw verkocht veel

van haar oude spullen.

The woman sold many of

her old things.

Ze haalde alles uit de kast

vanmiddag.

She pulled everything out of

the cabinet.

6.04 3.77

28

She pulled out all the stops this

afternoon.

Omdat veel werknemers

moesten overwerken,

schakelde de directeur

extra personeel in.

As many employees had

to work overtime, the

director called in extra

staff.

De machinist van de oude

stoomtrein opende een

uitlaat, want ze gingen wel

erg snel.

The conductor of the old

steam train opened an

exhaust, for they were

going very fast.

Dat haalde wat druk van de

ketel gelukkig.

Fortunately, that took some of

the pressure off the cauldron.

Fortunately, that made things

a bit less intense.

6.16 3.77

De dader werd

uiteindelijk niet schuldig

bevonden, omdat zijn

vrouw hem hielp.

The perpetrator was

eventually found not

guilty because his wife

helped him.

De vrouw van de achtbaan

gaf aan hoe lang het

jongetje moest zijn om mee

te mogen.

The woman at the roller

coaster indicated how tall

the little boy had to be to be

allowed on.

Zij hield hem een hand boven

het hoofd helaas.

She held a hand over his head,

unfortunately.

She protected him,

unfortunately.

5.29 2.03

Stijn en Maartje

irriteerden elkaar al de

hele dag.

Stijn and Maartje had

been annoying each

other all day.

Bas en Els zijn

concurrenten voor de winst

tijdens de

hardloopwedstrijd.

Bas and Els are

competitors for the win in

the running competition.

Uiteindelijk ging zij als eerste

door het lint vanochtend.

In the end, she was the first to

go through the finishing

straight this morning.

In the end, she was the first to

lose her temper this morning.

5.17 2.87

De reizigers hadden

geen kaartje toen de

Moeder had te veel spullen

meegenomen naar het park.

Ze vielen door de mand helaas.

6.04 2.90

29

conducteur hen kwam

controleren.

The passengers had no

ticket when the

conductor came to check

them.

Mother had taken too many

things to the park.

Unfortunately, they fell

through the basket.

Unfortunately, they did not get

away with it.

Wendy heeft het

ontzettend druk.

Wendy is very busy.

Eefje wil graag groter

lijken dan ze is.

Eefje would like to look

bigger than she is.

Ze loopt op haar tenen sinds

vorige week.

She has been tiptoeing since

last week.

She has been stressed since

last week.

5.04 3.97

De directeur was niet

tevreden met het huidige

beleid.

The director was not

satisfied with the current

policy.

De piraat vergistte zich in

de kant van het schip waar

het anker hoorde.

The pirate mistook the side

of the ship where the

anchor belonged.

Hij gooide het over een andere

boeg gisteren.

He threw it over another

[ship] bow yesterday.

He changed course yesterday.


Vergistte de piraat zich?

(ja)

Was the pirate making a

mistake? (yes)

5.75 3.03

Coen had nooit

verwacht dat hij de baan

echt zou krijgen.

Coen never expected

that he would actually

get the job.

De piloot vloog duidelijk

lager dan normaal.

The pilot was clearly flying

lower than normal.

Hij was in de wolken die dag.

He was in the clouds that day.

He was on cloud nine that day.

3.17 5.94

Teun winkelde erg vaak.

Teun shopped a lot.

Jorick heeft een naar

ongeluk gehad.

Hij had een gat in zijn hand

vroeger.

5.63 2.90

30

Jorick had a bad accident. He used to have a hole in his

hand.

He used to spend too much

money.

Hein was al heel oud.

Hein was already very

old.

De klusjesman was erg

goed met metaal.

The handyman was very

good with metal.

Hij legde het loodje

eergisteren.

He laid the lead [pipe]

yesterday.

He died the day before

yesterday.

5.63 1.74

31

Filler items

Context sentence SPR sentence Associated question

Met mijn vrienden was ik kamperen in Spanje,

waar het weer heel aangenaam was.

I was camping with my friends in Spain, where the

weather was very pleasant.

We sliepen in de open lucht zonder tent.

We slept in the open without a tent.

Waren we kamperen in Spanje? (ja)

Were we camping in Spain? (yes)

Als je gaat picknicken op het strand moet je wel

goed opletten.

When you go on a picnic on the beach, you have

to be careful.

Anders zit je eten snel onder het zand.

Otherwise, your food will soon be covered in

sand.

Moet je opletten dat je eten nat wordt? (nee)

Do you have to be careful not to get your food

wet? (no)

Vanuit haar balkon had Maaike goed zicht op de

vechtpartij op straat.

From her balcony, Maaike had a good view of the

brawl in the street.

Daarom riep de politie haar op als getuige.

That is why the police called her as a witness.

Had Maaike zicht op een verkeersongeluk? (nee)

Did Maaike have a view on a traffic accident?

(no)

Scheiden is altijd lastig, zeker als er kinderen bij

betrokken zijn.

Divorce is always difficult, especially when

children are involved.

Vaak is er dan ruzie over de voogdij.

There are often fights over custody.

Is er vaak ruzie over wie er voor de kinderen

mag zorgen? (ja)

Do you often argue about who can take care of

the children? (yes)

Suzanne had al een paar maanden lang last van

haar kies toen ze naar de tandarts ging.

Suzanne had been suffering from a toothache for

a few months when she went to the dentist.

Ze kreeg een verdoving tegen de pijn.

She was given an anaesthetic against the pain.

Had Suzanne last van haar teen? (nee)

Was Suzanne bothered by her toe? (no)

Naar de bioscoop gaan is heel leuk.

Voor de film begint, haal ik altijd een grote bak

popcorn.

Haal ik altijd een grote bak popcorn? (ja)

32

Going to the cinema is great fun.

Before the film starts, I always get a big bowl of

popcorn.

Do I always get a big bowl of popcorn? (Yes)

Johan en Linda vierden onlangs hun 25-jarig

huwelijk.

Johan and Linda recently celebrated their 25th

wedding anniversary.

Dus nodigden ze de hele familie uit voor een

groot feest.

So they invited the whole family to a big party.

Nodigden Johan en Linda al hun vrienden uit?

(nee)

Did Johan and Linda invite all their friends?

(no)

Zelf podcasts opnemen is helemaal niet zo

goedkoop.

Recording your own podcasts isn't that cheap.

Je moet namelijk heel wat betalen voor een goede

microfoon.

After all, you have to pay a lot of money for a

good microphone.

Is zelf podcasts opnemen duurder dan verwacht?

(ja)

Is recording your own podcasts more expensive

than you expected? (Yes)

Ferdy zorgt ervoor dat hij elke ochtend stevig

ontbijt.

Ferdy makes sure he has a hearty breakfast every

morning.

Vaak is er nauwelijks nog plek op zijn bord.

Often there is hardly any room left on his plate.

Emma vindt de geur van sigaretten

verschrikkelijk.

Emma hates the smell of cigarettes.

De kleren van haar vriendin stinken altijd naar

rook.

Her friend's clothes always stink of smoke.

Tijdens een marathon is het belangrijk om goed te

blijven drinken.

During a marathon, it is important to keep

drinking well.

Toen de loper door de laatste bocht kwam gaf

iemand hem water.

When the runner came through the last bend,

someone gave him water.

Als ik op een lange reis ga, leen ik vaak wat

boeken bij de bibliotheek.

Soms lever ik ze niet op tijd in en krijg ik een

enorme boete.

33

When I go on a long trip, I often borrow some

books from the library.

Sometimes I don't return them on time and get a

huge fine.

Marjolijn vindt gokken heel leuk maar is niet

goed in kaartspelen.

Marjolijn likes gambling very much but she is not

good at playing cards.

Vorige week verloor ze veel geld tijdens het

pokeren.

Last week she lost a lot of money playing poker.

Ik ging vaak op zaterdagochtend vissen met mijn

vader.

I often went fishing on Saturday morning with my

father.

We namen altijd een emmer wormen mee als aas.

We always took a bucket of worms as bait.

Jagers moeten er op letten dat ze niet per ongeluk

elkaar neerschieten.

Hunters have to take care not to accidentally

shoot each other.

Daarom dragen ze vaak een oranje vest.

That's why they often wear an orange vest.

Petra is erg blij dat ze tijdens de schaatswedstrijd

derde geworden is.

Petra is very happy that she came third in the

speed skating competition.

Zij wilde zo graag een plek op het podium.

She so badly wanted a place on the podium.

Bij de NS zijn er momenteel erg vaak

werkzaamheden.

At the moment, there are a lot of works on the NS

[Dutch National Railway Company].

Tussen Arnhem en Den Bosch rijden nu alleen

maar bussen.

Between Arnhem and Den Bosch only buses are

running at the moment.

34

Studentenhuizen staan bekend om hun niet al te

hygiënische toiletten.

Student houses are known for their not very

hygienic toilets.

Als je die schoon wilt maken, kun je beter

handschoenen dragen.

If you want to clean them, you'd better wear

gloves.

Mijn ouders waren erg blij toen mijn zus eindelijk

ging trouwen.

My parents were very happy when my sister

finally got married.

Mijn moeder moest zelfs huilen tijdens de

ceremonie.

My mother even cried during the ceremony.

Afgelopen zaterdag heb ik een tweedehands

televisie gekocht, maar ik kan niet van zender

wisselen.

Last Saturday I bought a second-hand television,

but I can't change the channel.

Wat er niet bij zat was een afstandsbediening.

What it didn't come with was a remote control/

Een van de boksers viel uiteindelijk op de mat.

One of the boxers finally fell on the mat.

De scheidsrechter riep de ander uit tot winnaar.

The referee declared the other one the winner.

Reizen met het vliegtuig duurt tegenwoordig veel

langer, omdat iedereen bang is voor terrorisme.

Travelling by plane takes much longer nowadays,

because everyone is afraid of terrorism.

Op vliegvelden staat er altijd een lange rij voor de

douane.

At airports, there is always a long queue for

customs.

Op een boerderij wonen heeft ook wel nadelen.

Living on a farm also has its disadvantages.

Elke ochtend werd ik vroeg wakker door het

gekraai van de haan.

Every morning, I was woken up early by the

crowing of the rooster.

35

Heb je afgelopen zaterdag de voetbalwedstrijd

gezien?

Did you see the football match last Saturday?

Die spits scoorde echt een hele mooie goal.

That striker scored a really nice goal.

Joeri gaat in de ochtendspits soms op de fiets naar

zijn werk.

In the morning rush hour, Joeri sometimes goes to

work by bike.

Dat gaat vaak zelfs sneller dan met de auto.

That is often even faster than going by car.

Soms schrikken de kinderen wel van het gebrul

van de leeuw.

Sometimes the lion's roar scares the children.

Schrikken de kinderen van het gebrul van de

tijger? (nee)

Does the roaring of the tiger frighten the

children? (no)

Hij is me nog aardig wat geld schuldig.

He still owes me a lot of money.

Ben ik hem nog aardig wat geld verschuldigd?

(nee)

Do I owe him a lot of money? (no)

Hij heeft duidelijk nog niet veel ervaring.

He clearly doesn't have much experience yet.

Heeft deze medewerker weinig ervaring? (ja)

Does this employee have little experience? (yes)

Planten in huis maken het meteen gezelliger.

Plants in the house make it cosier.

Maken planten het huis gezelliger? (ja)

Do plants make the house cosier? (yes)

Op het einde word je wel beloond met een

fantastisch uitzicht.

At the end, you are rewarded with a fantastic

view.

Word je op het einde beloond met lekker eten?

(nee)

Are you rewarded with good food at the end?

(no)

36

Daar werkte ik namelijk achter de kassa.

The thing is, I worked there behind the cash

register.

Werkte ik achter de kassa? (ja)

Was I working behind the counter? (Yes)

Hij wil heel graag een grotere tafel.

He would like a bigger table.

Heeft Martijn meubels nodig voor zijn

slaapkamer? (nee)

Does Martin need furniture for his bedroom?

(no)

De vrouw leefde al jaren alleen.

The woman had been living alone for years.

Leefde de vrouw alleen? (ja)

Did the woman live alone? (Yes)

Hij is me nog aardig wat geld schuldig.

He still owes me a lot of money.

Ben ik hem nog aardig wat geld verschuldigd?

(nee)

Do I owe him a lot of money? (no)

Hij moest toch lachen uiteindelijk.

He had to laugh in the end.

Voor al haar documenten wilde ze een nieuwe

laptop.

She wanted a new laptop for all her documents.

Dat wordt waarschijnlijk een flink litteken.

That will probably be quite a scar.

37

Na een paar uur wilde zij nog steeds niet het

zwembad uit.

After a few hours, she still did not want to leave

the pool.

Uiteindelijk besloten we te stoppen om te vragen

naar de weg.

Finally, we decided to stop and ask for directions.

Vleermuizen vind ik erg fascinerende dieren.

I find bats very fascinating animals.

Gelukkig is hij nu weer gemaakt door de

reparateur.

Fortunately, it has been repaired by the

repairman.

Toen ze de top bereikten, werden ze overweldigd

door het uitzicht.

When they reached the top, they were

overwhelmed by the view.

Als ze klaar is, is ze helemaal nat van het zweet.

When she's finished, she's all wet with sweat

.

Dat is overigens altijd al zo geweest.

It has always been like that, by the way.

38

Buiten bouwden ze een grote sneeuwpop.

Outside they built a big snowman.

Zij willen graag een groter huis.

They would like a bigger house.

Om mij te feliciteren, stuurde ze me nog wel een

kaartje.

To congratulate me, they sent me a card.

Het is altijd moeilijk om een goed cadeau te

bedenken.

It is always difficult to think of a good gift.

Die paar weken rust hebben hem zeker goed

gedaan.

Those few weeks of rest have certainly done him

good.

Tijdens de Vierdaagse is er behoorlijk veel lawaai.

During the Four Days Marches there is a lot of

noise.

Met een theoretische opleiding vind je

tegenwoordig toch geen baan.

You can't find a job with a theoretical education

these days anyway.

39

Ik zou de hele week pizza kunnen eten.

I could eat pizza all week.

Zij had veel te lang niet meer geschaatst.

She had not skated for far too long.

Gelukkig zie je de vlek niet zo goed op mijn

donkere trui.

Luckily you can't see the stain so well on my dark

jumper.

Op zondagavond kijkt ze altijd naar dat

programma van Lubach.

She always watches that show of Lubach [Dutch

late night show host] on Sunday evening.

Laatst heb ik koeien zien lopen op straat.

The other day, I saw cows walking on the street.

Naast kleding zijn we ook op zoek naar mooie

handtassen.

Apart from clothes, we are also looking for

beautiful handbags.

Ze gaat echt heel graag zwemmen.

She really likes to go swimming.

Ik heb heel wat zaadjes geplant in mijn moestuin.

40

I planted a lot of seeds in my vegetable garden.

We hadden echt veel te veel gegeten.

We had really eaten too much.

Ik sta vaak een lange tijd doelloos naar mezelf te

staren in de spiegel.

I often spend a long time staring at myself

aimlessly in the mirror.

Hij kookt nu vijf keer per week.

He cooks five times a week now.

Ze was zelden zo gelukkig geweest.

She had rarely been so happy.

Hij werd gelukkig snel in veiligheid gebracht door

de badmeester.

Fortunately, he was quickly taken to safety by the

lifeguard.

Sindsdien draagt hij altijd een helm.

Since then, he always wears a helmet.

Ik had mijn hond het liefst meegenomen op reis.

I would have preferred to take my dog with me on

a trip.

41

Je kunt dit natuurlijk ook uitbesteden aan een

verhuisbedrijf.

Of course, you can also outsource this to a

removal company.

Ze pakte het vliegtuig vorige week.

She took the plane last week.

Ze vroeg de dokter om een nieuwe afspraak.

She asked the doctor for a new appointment.

Bij schrijven is het begin altijd het moeilijkst.

When writing, the beginning is always the

hardest.

Bach is mijn favoriete componist tegenwoordig.

Bach is my favourite composer these days.

Hij moest daar erg om lachen.

He had to laugh about it.

Waar mogelijk neemt ze liever de lift.

Whenever possible, she prefers to take the lift.

De kinderen renden weg zo snel als ze konden.

The children ran away as fast as they could.

42

Even later hoorde ze een verschrikkelijke knal.

A little later she heard a terribly loud bang.

Hij werkte namelijk in de kerk als pastoor.

He was working in the church as a priest.

43

Appendix C – Analysis based on full dataset (including item repetitions within a participant)

The average reading times and standard deviations of the idiom-final nouns and spill-over words per

context are presented in Table C1. Differences in reading times between contexts were very small for

both the idiom-final nouns and the spill-over words.

Table C1: Average reading times and standard deviations

(ms) by context for the idiom final word and the spill-over

word.

Context Idiom final noun Spill-over word

Mean SD Mean SD

None 304.73 143.55 355.39 182.74

Figuratively biasing 302.89 138.10 358.24 184.04

Literally biasing 301.91 129.62 355.23 170.72

Figure C1 presents the mean differences between the figuratively biasing context and the no

context condition (left panels) and the mean differences between the literally biasing context and the no

context condition (right panels) per participants. Positive values indicate contextual facilitation. The

figure shows that participants were differently affected by our context manipulation.

44

Figure C1: The mean differences between contexts per participant for both the idiom-final nouns (upper

panels) and the spill-over words (lower panels). Error bars represent SDs.

The results of the linear mixed effects regression analysis on the idiom-final noun are presented

in Table C2. This analysis revealed significant main effects of Non-verbal IQ and Word reading. The

effect of non-verbal IQ was positive, indicating that participants with a higher non-verbal IQ were slower

in reading the idiom-final noun than participants with a lower non-verbal IQ. In addition, we observed a

facilitatory effect of word reading: Participants with better word reading skills were faster in reading the

idiom-final noun than participants with poorer word reading skills. The effects of these participant-related

predictors were not modulated by context.

45

Table C2: Idiom-final noun regression model with logged RTs as dependent variable (the no-



Intercept 2.4455 (0.0324) 75.486 <0.001 ***

Fig. biasing context (FBC) -0.0013 (0.0048) -0.274 0.784

Lit. biasing context (LBC) -0.0008 (0.0048) -0.168 0.866





FBC × Visual WM -0.001 (0.0056) -0.172 0.863

LBC × Visual WM 0.0091 (0.0056) 1.621 0.105


FBC × Processing speed 0.0035 (0.0054) 0.64 0.522


Non-verbal IQ 0.0587 (0.0273) 2.148 0.039 *

FBC × Non-verbal IQ -0.0081 (0.0068) -1.189 0.235

LBC × Non-verbal IQ -0.0105 (0.0069) -1.527 0.127

Word reading -0.0607 (0.0206) -2.947 0.006 ***

FBC × Word reading 0.0031 (0.0052) 0.596 0.551

LBC × Word reading 0.005 (0.0052) 0.964 0.335


FBC × SPC 0.0013 (0.0057) 0.233 0.816

LBC × SPC -0.0001 (0.0057) -0.014 0.989


Idiom final noun frequency 0.0028 (0.0057) 0.491 0.629

Idiom final noun length -0.0017 (0.0044) -0.384 0.705



Item 0.0004 0.020

Residual 0.0114 0.107

46

The results of the linear mixed effects regression analysis of the spill-over word are presented in

Table C3. Similar to the idiom-final noun analysis, a significant main effect of word reading was

observed, indicating that participants with better word reading skills were faster at reading the spill-over

word than participants with poorer word reading skills. This effect was not modulated by context.

Furthermore, the analysis revealed a significant interaction effect between linguistic knowledge and

context (visualised in Figure C2). The effect of linguistic knowledge was significantly stronger for spill-

over words in the no-context condition, than in the literally biasing context condition. In comparison to

the figuratively biasing context condition, the effect of linguistic knowledge in the no-context condition

was only marginally significantly stronger.

In sum, we observed no main effect of context. However, as predicted, we observed that

individuals with better word reading abilities read idiom-final and spill-over words (in all three context

conditions) faster than individuals with poorer word-reading skills. Non-verbal intelligence had a negative

effect: In all three context conditions, individuals with higher scores read idiom-final words more slowly

than individual with lower scores. Finally, we observed an interaction between Context and Linguistic

knowledge such that spill-over words were read faster in the no-context condition (compared to the

literally biasing condition) by individuals with larger rather than smaller linguistic knowledge.

47

Table C3: Spill-over word regression model with logged RTs as the dependent variable (the no-



Intercept 2.519 (0.101) 24.943 <0.001 ***


Lit. biasing context (LBC) 0.0033 (0.0058) 0.574 0.566


FBC × Ling. knowledge 0.0131 (0.0071) 1.849 0.065 .

LBC × Ling. knowledge 0.0165 (0.0071) 2.327 0.02 *


FBC × Visual WM 0.0021 (0.0068) 0.314 0.753

LBC × Visual WM 0.0045 (0.0068) 0.662 0.508




Non-verbal IQ 0.0569 (0.0293) 1.942 0.061 .

FBC × Non-verbal IQ -0.0038 (0.0083) -0.453 0.651

LBC × Non-verbal IQ -0.0006 (0.0083) -0.077 0.939

Word reading -0.0599 (0.0221) -2.707 0.011 *

FBC × Word reading 0.0025 (0.0063) 0.394 0.694

LBC × Word reading 0.0011 (0.0063) 0.178 0.859


FBC × SPC -0.0055 (0.0069) -0.793 0.428

LBC × SPC -0.0034 (0.0069) -0.496 0.62

Idiom transparency 0.001 (0.0078) 0.132 0.897

Spill-over word frequency -0.0064 (0.0174) -0.368 0.716

Spill-over word length 0.0024 (0.005) 0.481 0.635



Item 0.0013 0.036

Residual 0.0167 0.129

48

Figure C2: The interaction between Context and Linguistic knowledge for the spill-over word. The error

bands represent the 95% confidence interval.

exploring individual differences in recognizing idiomatic

Documents