Study supported in part by U.S. Office of Education Grant.

This paper discusses the theory and presents examples of free-association norms. Examples from several categories of free-association data are given. Their use in experiments on cultural characteristics of the associative structures of words are also explained. A graph of the relationship between primary and secondary associations and tables of…

Results were interpreted as support for the hypothesis that making associations to verbal units facilitates recall and that reaction time is an index of the facility with which associations can be made. (Authors)

Two experiments investigate the relationship between developmental trends for auditory selective attention, and dependence on central/incidental word relations. Subjects were 48 children each from first, fourth, and seventh grades, and 48 adults. (CM)

Tests the theory that culturally associated words in a pair and nonassociated words in a pair differ after a single study trial in terms of their frequency representation in memory. (Editor/RK)

Two studies examined whether 1-year olds' name learning during joint attention was guided by expectation that names will be in the form of spoken words. Results showed that 13-month olds, but not 20-month olds, learned a new sound/object correspondence, as evidenced by their choosing targets reliably in responses to hearing the word or sound on…

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated phonologically mediated priming of preexisting and new associations in word retrieval. Young and older adults completed paired word stems with the first word that came to mind. Priming of preexisting associations occurred when word-stem pairs containing homophones (e.g., beech-s____) showed more…

This study investigated a child's development of the concept that a word is a unit used to express meaning. Thirty children, selected at random from grades one through six, were chosen from a school where no exclusive method of teaching reading was used. Each child participated in two tasks. First, a list of nouns was presented in written form and…

IN A THREE-STAGE STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE PHONIC AND LOOK-SAY METHODS OF READING ON THE TRANSFER OF READING SKILLS, 60 KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN WERE DIVIDED INTO A LETTER GROUP, A WORD GROUP, AND A CONTROL GROUP. MATERIALS USED WERE SIX GRAPHEMES DESIGNED DIFFERENTLY FROM ENGLISH LETTERS AND ASSIGNED TO SIX SINGLE ENGLISH PHONEMES. DURING STAGE…

There are basically two different models for the word recognition process. One model postulates that a reader primarily uses sound/symbol cues to recognize a word; a second model states that a reader focuses mainly on whole-word characteristics. To determine which model best fits beginning and adult readers, a multiple regression analysis was…

Endel Tulving's distinction between "episodic" and "semantic" memory defines age differences in word association norms more comprehensively than the usual syntactic classifications. As subjects mature the principal development is an episodic-semantic shift. Young children associate primarily with the stimulus' perceived…