Table 1.

Lexical–statistical properties for three types of Chinese idioms.

Idioms’ types	Stroke (M ± SD)	Frequency	Sentimental color (M ± SD)
Physical representation	30.39 ± 6.58	48	2.27 ± 0.72
Reading the single mind	30.10 ± 7.81	83	2.03 ± 0.82
Reading the interactive mind	29.67 ± 6.29	96	2.04 ± 0.75

Chinese idiom frequency is measured as a word-per-million figure using the People's daily Character Frequency Statistics (1998).