WORD IDENTIFICATION AS A FUNCTION OF SEMANTIC CLUES AND ASSOCIATIVE FREQUENCY

Efficient ways for retrieving target words from 36 undergraduate Ss' vocabularies were investigated by inverting the procedure used in collecting the Michigan restricted association norms and determining under what conditions the responses of the norms will elicit the stimuli which originally elicited those particular responses. Type of restricted relation, number of clues given, and restricted associative frequency were manipulated in the experiment. The effects of free associative frequency and the size of the set of appropriate responses provided supplementary information. Target words were retrieved more frequently when clues with high restricted associative frequency, a great number of clues, and logical rather than infralogical clues were given. In addition, the greater the free associative frequency between the clue word and the target word and the smaller the size of the set of appropriate responses, the more often Ss identified the target word. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.