Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

A statistic, Z, proposed by Zinger, is applied for measuring associative response diversiry. This statistic is shown to be more useful than a, a staristic previously recommended for that purpose. The values of 1/Z vary from zero to one and tend to a different asymptotic value for each stimulus, rather than converging to zero for infinite samples as they do for a. The variance V(Z) is known and diminishes with increasing sample size. This makes it possible to compare stimuli for any sample size at a given level of confidence. The performance of the Z indicator in empirical samples was examined by running computer simulations sampling from the Queen's University Association norms. The stability of Z across sample sizes was investigated. Sample sizes necessary for detecting differences between stimuli were predicted. The 100 Kent-Rosanoff stimuli were ranked according to their 1/Z values and grouped into 12 clusters.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arthur

A. Z.

Queen's norms for responses to 100 words from the Kent-Rosanoff word association test. National Research Council of Canada, Project No. APA-0269, 1969.

Brown

W. P.

Emotional indicators in word association. British Journal of Psychology, 1965, 56, 401–412.

Cramer

Response entropy as a function of the affective quality of the stimulus. Psychonomic Science, 1965, 3, 347–348.

Dalrymple-Alford

E. C.

Additional comments on the a parameter of Horvath's model for free association tests. Psychological Review, 1973, 80, 93–94.

Fisher

R. A.

Statistical methods for research workers. (8th ed.) New York: Stechert, 1941.

Horvath

W. J.

A stochastic model for word association tests. Psychological Review, 1963, 70, 361–364.

Hull

C. L.

Lugoff

L. S.

Complex signs in diagnostic free association. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1921, 4, 111–136.

Levinger

Clark

Emotional factors in the forgetting of word associations. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 62, 99–105.

Rubenstein

Aborn

Psycholinguistics. Annual Review of Psychology, 1960, 11, 291–322.

10.

Shapiro

S. I.

Palermo

D. S.

An atlas of normative free association data. Psychonomic Monograph Supplements, 1968, 2, No. 12, 219–250.

11.

Simon

H. A.

On a class of skew distribution functions. Biometrika, 1955, 42, 425–440.

12.

Smith

M. G.

Harleston

B. W.

Stimulus abstractness and emotionality as determinants of behavioral and physiological responses in a word-association task. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1966, 5, 309–313.

13.

Vikis-Freibergs

A stochastic model for free-association response hierarchies?

Psychological Review, 1972, 79, 268–274.

14.

Vikis-Freibergs

Freibergs

I. F.

Free association norms in French and English: inter-linguistic and intra-linguistic comparisons. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 1976, 30, 123–133.

15.

Ward

J. H.

Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1963, 58, 236–244.

16.

Wishart

CLUSTAN 1C users manual. London: Computing Centre, University College, London, 1975.

17.

Zinger

Word-association tests: a statistical approach. Psychological Reports, 1982, 50, 283–287.

Reliability of Associative Response Diversity as a Characteristic of Stimulus Words

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References