The Effects of Multiple Presentations on the Ratings and Memorability of Novel Figurative Phrases

How the perceptions of novel figurative phrases change over the course of numerous presentations were addressed in three studies using rating tasks (Studies 1 and 3) and recall tasks (Study 2). The present set of studies replicated much of Schweigert et al.’s (J Psychol Res 32:455–475, 2003) findings of changes in correlations among figurative phrases ratings. The results also suggest that catchiness, frequency heard agreement, and frequency used agreement can be used as predictors of phrase memorability and potential predictors of later idiomaticity.