Abstract
46 Caucasian and 80 Negro Ss were given an unlimited amount of time in which to record continuous associations to target words embedded in two types of contexts, grammatically meaningful versus an equal number of unrelated words. Results showed that meaningless contexts functioned as sources of multiple input (cf. Howes & Osgood, 1954) and evoked significantly greater numbers of associations as well as increased response variability (cf. Wilcox, 1966) than did meaningful contexts. Both types of contexts evoked significantly more associations than did target words presented in isolation. Further, high frequency words evoked significantly larger numbers of associations than did low, irrespective of context. Also, white Ss generated significantly larger numbers of associations over all conditions than did Negro Ss. This was seen to be primarily due to the fact that Negro Ss often exhibit lower verbal abilities. Over-all results were interpreted to mean that: meaningful context provides a mechanism whereby S can chunk or unitize the target word plus context and more readily complete the associative task, meaningless contexts increase response variability via multiple input capability, in contrast to previous research (Pollio, Wilcox, & Sundland, 1966) associative hierarchies did not differ as a result of havng been collected within differing contexts except that greater percentages of unique associations were observed than when target words occur in isolation, and context seems best viewed as a constraint capable of determining both type and number of associations available to S, depending, of course, upon the nature of the context.
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