[Corpora-List] a worldwide word association test

Wed Feb 15 13:10:55 UTC 2012

This same thing happened to me ... 

Mike Round
Center for autoSocratic Excellence
www.rationalsys.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Washtell <lec3jrw at leeds.ac.uk>
To: Marc Brysbaert <marc.brysbaert at ugent.be>; corpora <corpora at uib.no>
Sent: Wed, Feb 15, 2012 6:41 am
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] a worldwide word association test

Hi,
I found this incarnation of the word association experiment a little unnatural. 
*Perhaps it is best not to read on at this stage if you're planning on having a 
o at it, just in case I influence you!!**
For each word the user is asked to provide three responses, one below the last, 
hich arise "spontaneously" from the cue word. I think its fair to say that 
ersonally I never had three responses all come to mind simultaneously, such 
hat I could hold them in my mind and then fill out the boxes. Rather, I'd have 
ne arrive (which I might then fill in) and then I'd have to "allow" my mind to 
ome up with another and so on.
What I found however was that my latter responses tended to be influenced by my 
revious responses, and in some cases were only very tenuously associated with 
he original cue word, or not at all (e.g. awake -> alive -> kicking; idea -> 
hought -> provoke). I then found myself in the peculiar situation of 
onsciously fighting this urge... and also of course wondering whether perhaps I 
houldn't do such a thing. To be fair, the experimenters do provide the option 
f writing "no response", and I did this a few times when I was in doubt.
I wonder then if the experimenters are accounting for this effect (I hope it is 
ot just me!) Presumably the box to which a response belongs is being recorded, 
o if the second and third responses are indeed coloured by this sort of effect 
hen it can be observed, and perhaps even factored out if it is not in keeping 
ith the aims of the study. But what if users fill the boxes in some other 
rbitrary or even random order, as opposed to top-to-bottom like I did? More 
enerally, I wonder whether the task of trying to be alert for three 
imultaneous responses may make this a more of a conscious task and colour the 
ypes of responses garnered.
I'd be interested to hear others thoughts having attempted the task.
On a related note, there is a similar experiment which has been running for some 
ears now at www.wordassociation.org<http://www.wordassociation.org>. I did make 
 few attempts to tried to contact the creator, to try and obtain the 
substantial) data for my PhD thesis, but had no luck. Does anybody know 
nything about this?
Justin Washtell
niversity of Leeds

________________________________
rom: corpora-bounces at uib.no [corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of Marc 
rysbaert [marc.brysbaert at ugent.be]
ent: 15 February 2012 10:07
o: corpora at uib.no
ubject: [Corpora-List] a worldwide word association test
Dear all,
Gert Storms and Simon De Deyne are running a worldwide word association test in 
nglish. Thus far they have over 1.25 million responses, but they require many 
ore in order to have enough spontaneously produced associates to all known 
nglish words. The data will be made available to all researchers, just like the 
lorida norms, so that we can use them for our studies and include them in our 
omputational models. Would it be possible to forward the call to your 
olleagues and students? The task itself only takes 5 minutes and involves 
iving associates to a few target words.
Many thanks in advance, marc brysbaert
From: Gerrit Storms [mailto:Gert.Storms at ppw.kuleuven.be]
ent: 15 February 2012 10:55
o: Marc Brysbaert
ubject: word associations
Dear Marc,
Can I ask you a little favor?
ver the past few months, we have been trying to set up a scientific study that 
s important for many researchers interested in words, word meaning, semantics, 
nd cognitive science in general.  It is a huge word association project, in 
hich people are asked to participate in a small task that doesn't last longer 
han 5 minutes. Our goal is to build a global word association network that 
ontains connections between about 40.000 words, the size of the lexicon of an 
verage adult. Setting up such a network might teach us a lot about semantic 
emory, how it develops, and maybe also about how it can deteriorate (like in 
lzheimer's disease). Most people enjoy doing the task, but we need thousands of 
articipants to succeed. Up till today, we found about 40,000 participants 
illing to do the little task, but we need more responses. That is why we 
ddress you.  Would it be possible to forward this call for participation to 
raduate and undergraduate students who are fluent in English?
The task can be found at
http://www.smallworldofwords.com
Of course the network will be freely available to all interested language 
esearchers when it becomes substantial enough.
We thank you in advance.
If you want more information, don't hesitate to contact me.
With kind regards,
Prof. G. Storms and Dr. S. De Deyne
epartment of Psychology
niversity of Leuven
iensestraat 102
000 Leuven
elgium
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