Adding more fuel to the fire: An eye-tracking study of idiom processing by native and non-native speakers

Using eye-tracking, we investigate on-line processing of idioms in a biasing story context by native and non-native speakers of English. The stimuli are idioms used figuratively ( at the end of the day — ‘eventually’), literally ( at the end of the day — ‘in the evening’), and novel phrases ( at the end of the war). Native speaker results indicate a processing advantage for idioms over novel phrases, as evidenced by fewer and shorter fixations....