How Idioms Are Recognized when Individuals Are “Thrown Off the Track”, “Off the Rack” or “Off the Path”: A Decision Time Experiment in Healthy Volunteers

Figurative elements in language have their own particularities, including words that deviate from their generally accepted definition to amplify our language or to paraphrase an issue. It is still unclear how individuals process idioms that are figurative or ambiguous, especially when they additionally become distracted by modified idioms that are similar in appearance. In our study, 47 healthy adults (mean age of 27.3 years, SD = 2.9) participated in a decision time experiment to determine how participants recognize well-formed, genuine German idioms alongside certain idiom modifications. All participants were initially exposed to a prime on a screen. Then, they had to detect the target id…