Effects of Familiarity on Idiom Comprehension in African American and European American Fifth Graders

Abstract

In order to test the language experience hypothesis, the comprehension of high-, moderate-, and low-familiarity idioms was examined in African American (N=24) and European American (N= 24) fifth-grade students in the Mid-South. This study was designed to augment the existing literature on cross-cultural idiom comprehension, of which there is a paucity of research, and provide a look from a culturally diverse perspective at idiom comprehension in youth. Results indicate a significant effect of group on idioms rated as low-familiarity, whereas idioms rated as high- and moderate-familiarity did not distinguish the groups. Additionally, the current results indicate a pattern of comprehension that is different from that found in previous studies, based on levels of familiarity (Nippold & Rudzinski, 1993) that were established in a different U.S. geographic location. The influences of social and regional culture on idiom comprehension and familiarity is discussed, and a preliminary hypothesis is proposed to explain these influences.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.