Word Associations and Meaningfulness Values for Grade-School-Aged Children

Abstract

Multiple word associations to 65 words, 52 of which were CVCs, were obtained from 100 boys and 100 girls in Grades 4, 6, and 8, aged respectively, 9 and 10, 11 and 12, 13 and 14. Conventional word-association norms were developed for each of these grade-sex groups for first, second, and third responses, separately and pooled. Meaningfulness values for each word, defined as the mean number of associations, were also determined for each group. Analysis of the primaries disclosed that approximately half the set of words had primaries which were the same across all groups and that such primaries were on the average of much higher frequencies than primaries which differed among groups. Primaries which differed among groups very often occurred as secondaries or tertiaries of the other groups. Frequency of primaries did not vary between sexes or across grade-age levels. While m values for the set of words increased with grade and age, the rank ordering of these values was essentially the same within each grade-age-sex group. Sex was not related to m values. Values of m when compared with Noble's m′ showed significant agreement both for rank-order comparisons and values dichotomized into high and low categories.