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The aim of this study was to determine the conceptual structures of exceptionally talented students about chemical change through the use of word associations. The study was conducted with 13 exceptionally talented students in seventh grade who were attending a science and art center located in a province in western Turkey. Data were collected with the help of a word association test (WAT) that involved eight concepts developed by the researchers and were analyzed qualitatively. The study comprised a pretest application of WAT, science activities, and a posttest. The results showed that the activities conducted improved the students' conceptual structures about chemical change. It might be recommended that such extracurricular activities be employed to support the development of the conceptual understanding of exceptionally talented students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research is to present a Spanish Word Association Norms (WAN) database of concrete nouns. The database includes 234 stimulus words (SWs) and 67,622 response words (RWs) provided by 478 young Mexican adults. Eight different measures were calculated to quantitatively analyze word-word relationships: 1) Associative strength of the first associate, 2) Associative strength of the second associate, 3) Sum of associative strength of first two associates, 4) Difference in associative strength between first two associates, 5) Number of different associates, 6) Blank responses, 7) Idiosyncratic responses, and 8) Cue validity of the first associate. The resulting database is an important contribution given that there are no published word association norms for Mexican Spanish. The results of this study are an important resource for future research regarding lexical networks, priming effects, semantic memory, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of work is to find out how self-control influences word associations. The research presented herein provides new insight into manifestations of self-control. Experimental study is based on the Strength model (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998), which assumes that self-control relies on limited resources of ego which become depleted with increased exercising of self-control (Ego depletion). The aim of this experiment was to verify in an empirical manner that the impairment of self-control can be manifested in word association tests. Continuous word association test (Kondáš, 1979) was used in this experiment. Distinct indicators of continuous word associations were divided into the following 4 categories; verbal dynamics, abnormalities in association, errors in the reproduction of association reactions and the overall number of mistakes. Parallel task and "e letter" crossing out exercises were used in order to impair ego resource. One-Way ANOVA was used in the analysis. The results of the study indicate that impaired self-control, induced by the "e letter" crossing out task, increased verbal dynamics. According to the obtained results, Continuous word association test provoke automatic processes. Further important indicators of impaired self-control were increased perseverations of potentially conflicting word 'control', erroneous reproductions of potentially conflicting word 'explosions' and the overall indicator of mistakes in conflict word explosions and control'. The experiment results show an increase in the number of mistakes of word association production when self-control is impaired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed at testing the relative effects of valence and arousal on the generation of unusual first associates in response to non-emotional inducers. To examine this question, four specific moods varying along both the valence and the arousal dimensions were induced: happiness (positive mood, high arousal), serenity (positive mood, low arousal), anger (negative mood, high arousal) and sadness (negative mood, low arousal). The results indicate that the uniqueness of word-associations is influenced by arousal levels rather than by the valence of mood. No matter what the valence, high-arousing moods enhanced the production of unusual associates in contrast to low-arousing moods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The consumption of ethical food is an area of major growth. The aim of the current study was to identify ethical concerns regarding food. University students (N =403) from Finland, Denmark and Italy completed a word association task, in which the given stimulus words were “ethical food” and “unethical food”. The data was first analysed qualitatively. Next, the most relevant, core categories were identified based on the frequency, rank and contextual stability. The results indicated that fourteen categories reflect the content and nature of ethical thinking with respect to food. The identified categories were required/prohibited food, natural/unnatural, local/global, healthy/unhealthy, equality/inequality, good animal welfare/poor animal welfare, rules and descriptions. In all countries, the core categories emerging from the stimulus word “ethical food” were the required food and the natural, while the core category identified from the stimulus word “unethical food” was the prohibited food. The most prevalent differences between the countries concerned the role of health, country of origin and the descriptions. In conclusion, various ethical aspects are considered when food is evaluated in ethical terms, but the relevance of these aspects differ, even in the European context. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although the Word Associates Format (WAF) is becoming more frequently used as a depth-of-knowledge measure, relatively little validation has been carried out on it. This report of two validation studies tackles various important WAF issues yet to be satisfactorily resolved.Study 1 conducted introspective interviews regarding students’ WAF test-taking behavior along with interviews on featured target words to determine how accurately the most common scoring system for the WAF reflects the examinees’ actual knowledge of the words. Analysis is provided concerning WAF accuracy and item answering strategies and patterns.Study 2 repeated the interview procedures from Study 1 with several modifications, including the addition of a receptive dimension in the word knowledge interview. The various WAF-scoring methods were compared, and the format types (6 and 8 option), distractor types, and distribution of answers were examined in depth.Both studies indicate that the WAF reflects true lexical knowledge fairly well at the extremes of the scoring scale while scores in the middle do not lead to any reliable interpretation. Furthermore, there is the likelihood that the WAF may both underestimate and overestimate vocabulary knowledge. Suggestions regarding item construction and use of the WAF are given to improve its accuracy and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract: In the present study, we have applied a word association procedure for assessing conceptual change in science education, leaning on the presuppositions of the theory of social representations. The proposed method was applied both before and after a university population ecology course. Our results have shown that the teaching procedure can change representations of stimulus terms, which could be considered analogous to “strong restructuring”. The methodology proved to be quite efficient in monitoring stimulus terms' extentness, as well as associations' centrality, validity, and coherence. The easiness of collecting data, as well as the potential of conducting rather unbiased longitudinal studies can contribute to the attractiveness of the methodology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An astronomical set of sentences can be produced in natural language by combining relatively simple sentence structures with a human-size lexicon. These sentences are within the range of human language performance. Here, we investigate the ability of simple recurrent networks (SRNs) to handle such combinatorial productivity. We successfully trained SRNs to process sentences formed by combining sentence structures with different groups of words. Then, we tested the networks with test sentences in which words from different training sentences were combined. The networks failed to process these sentences, even though the sentence structures remained the same and all words appeared on the same syntactic positions as in the training sentences. In these combination cases, the networks produced work-word associations, similar to the condition in which words are presented in the context of a random word sequence. The results show that SRNs have serious difficulties in handling the combinatorial productivity that underlies human language performance. We discuss implications of this result for a potential neural architecture of human language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether it may still be possible to develop a word association test as a means of assessing proficiency in a foreign language, despite the findings of past studies. To this effect, a multiple response word association test was constructed with careful consideration of prompt words as its defining criterion. In addition, a new and simpler method for calculating weighted stereotypy scores for responses was used. This test was administered to a group of learners, and the scores were correlated with C-test scores. In addition, the test was given to a control group of native speakers. The results indicated only moderate support for the notion that a word association test can function to assess proficiency, consistent with the findings of past studies. In view of these results, further suggestions for revisions to the word association/proficiency test are made in the hope that eventually a more effective test can be developed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]