Abstract
The power of associative relations to predict verbal generalization depends on their type: (a) direct, where one word is a free associate of another, and (b) indirect, where words have identical free associates in common. 30 Ss generalized between word-pairs preselected to have equal indices of predicted generalization based either on predominantly direct or indirect associations. Significantly greater amounts of generalization were obtained to directly related word-pairs (P < .0001), indirectly related word pairs yielding no more than chance amounts. An index of generalization based exclusively on direct associations correlated significantly with generalization (rho = .61) while inclusion of indirect associations reduced the correlation to chance levels (rho = .10). Examination of the literature suggests that the success of indices using indirect associations may derive from their inclusion of direct associations as well.
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