STUDYING CONTROLLED WORD ASSOCIATIONS 



375 



them in a later experiment. In experiment II these revised lists 

 were given to a new group of subjects to make possible a more 

 careful examination into the problems of technic under 

 consideration. 



To this end a complete survey of an abridged Standard Dic- 

 tionary of 300,000 words was made and all one, two, and three 

 syllable adjectives, nouns, and verbs (transitive and intransitive 

 separately) were listed. A verb having both a v.t. and v.i. mean- 

 ing was classed as v.t., so that the two verb lists comprised verbs 

 which, respectively, can take objects and which cannot. A large 

 number of all these words were necessarily omitted. These fell 

 into three classes, (a) technical words, such as modulus, titrates, (b) 

 unfamiliar and archaic words, such as moil, bosky, (c) obviously 

 vulgar words. In this last list are included only such words as 

 actually occur in the dictionary, and not words having their 

 vulgar meaning only in a subtle and secondary sense. Separate 

 consideration of these was made later. This made twelve lists, 

 which altogether totaled 10,888 words, with the words of each in 

 alphabetical order. To get them in random order, each list was 

 cut up so that one word was on each slip. The words of each list 

 separately were put in a box, shaken thoroughly and drawn out 

 one by one for relisting into groups of 40 words each. When the 

 words were in final form there were found to be the following 

 number in each class. 



These in groups of 40 each, were now ready for use. Two 

 groups of subjects were chosen, one to work on adjectives and 

 nouns, the other on both classes of verbs. The associations were 

 controlled as follows, 



