Measuring the strength, structure, and reliability of free associations.

Abstract

Current associative measures of word relatedness are criticized for being insufficiently versatile and for having inadequate statistical justification. This criticism is extended to a widely used measure, the mutual frequency score, which has been held to be based on the product-moment correlation. Measures of the reliability of free association are criticized on a similar basis. The reliability of free associations has typically been measured as the tendency of subjects to respond consistently on retesting. It is argued that the stability of the distribution of associations to a given stimulus, regardless of the behavior of individual subjects, is of greater interest and application. It is maintained that an association measure legitimately based on the product-moment correlation, and appropriate for measuring both word relatedness and the reliability of associations, is much needed. Such a measure is described and is claimed to be a very general measure, applicable to the measurement of any form of associative relationship. The experimental performance of the measure, in the prediction of free recall and the measurement of reliability, is summarized.1 This report is based on a thesis submitted to the Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.2 The author gratefully acknowledges the direction and advice provided by L.

Association tests and outdoor ecology education

“…Since Marx (1979) had demonstrated that such distributions are indeed representative and replicative, distributions of free associations have been used for operationalizing semantic concepts. Additionally, Mackenzie (1972) confirmed the reliability of such distributions. Associations are simple but efficient in determining human thoughts without having those thoughts expressed in the full discursive structure of language (Szalay & Deese, 1978).…”

Effects of attitudinal, cognitive, and situational variables on recall of biased communications.

“…This index is a variant of several proposed by various investigators, includingDeese (1962Deese ( , 1965,Garskoff and Houston (1963),Johnson (1964), andMacKenzie (1972). However, Weldon (Note 1) has shown that all the proposed indices are at least linear transformations of the intersection coefficient.…”