Abstract

Idioms are formulaic expressions that vary in a number of dimensions or psycholinguistic factors. It is suggested that these factors may modulate the way in which the cognitive system stores, accesses and retrieves these expressions from memory. We obtained the normative data of 1.082 Chilean Spanish idioms. A total of 622 volunteers from 18 to 83 years old participated in this research, who ranked the degree of familiarity, ambiguity, transparency and composition of the idioms. Internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, correlation and ANOVA analyses were conducted to evaluate the effect of age on the scores of each psycholinguistic dimension. Results showed a high internal consistency for the linguistic dimensions of familiarity, ambiguity and compositionality. However, inter-rater reliability scores were low for all groups and dimensions. Correlational analyses showed positive and significant coefficients among all the linguistic dimensions. Finally, significant differences were observed between all age groups in every psycholinguistic dimension. Results are interpreted in terms of its relevance to the study of figurative language processing.