Exploring Idiom Processing Across the Lifespan: Evidence from Eye Movements and Cognitive Measures.

As people grow older, language processing reflects both changes in cognitive resources and accumulated language experience. Although aging is associated with declines in working memory and inhibitory control, semantic and pragmatic knowledge is often preserved or enhanced. This trade-off is especially relevant for idioms, which require readers to resolve competition between literal and figurative interpretations. While idioms are stored as holistic phrasal units and idiom knowledge remains relatively robust with age (Sprenger et al., 2019), successful comprehension still depends on executive control, particularly when contextual cues are weak. Previous work suggests that older adults are slower to process noncanonical idioms (Haeuser et al., 2021) and rely more on supportive context (La Roi, 2020). We examined idiom processing across the adult lifespan using eye-tracking during sentence reading combined with a battery of seven cognitive tasks. A total of 110 native Dutch speakers aged 30–80 read 44 Dutch idioms and 44 matched literal phrases embedded in either supportive or neutral contexts. Analyses of early and late eye-movement measures using mixed-effects models showed that idioms were read faster than matched literal expressions across measures. This advantage was modulated by context: idioms were facilitated in idiom-biasing contexts, whereas literal continuations triggered increased reanalysis, particularly in later measures. No uniform age-related slowdown was observed; instead, age effects were primarily localized to reanalysis-sensitive measures and showed a nonlinear pattern. A principal component analysis yielded factors corresponding to working memory and cognitive flexibility. Higher working memory was associated with a larger idiom–literal contrast, while cognitive flexibility predicted greater sensitivity to context and more efficient suppression of literal interpretations. These findings indicate that idiom comprehension remains efficient across adulthood and that individual differences in cognitive resources, rather than age perse, drive variability in real-time figurative language processing.

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