STUDYING CONTROLLED WORD ASSOCIATIONS 377 



not to inhibit reactions that they might think foolish or vulgar; 

 that the emphasis in this experiment was being put on the reac- 

 tion tune, not the reaction word, so they must feel free to react 

 without inhibition. As thorough a spirit of informality as pos- 

 sible outside the working period was encouraged. All reaction 

 tunes over twelve seconds were rejected arbitrarily as failures. 

 The results for adjectives and nouns will be considered first, the 

 results for verbs later, as the former were investigated in greater 

 detail than were the verbs. 



Four subjects were used in the adjective-noun experiment, to 

 give three complete sets of reactions for all the adjectives and 

 nouns. All the adjectives were completed by each of subjects I, 

 II, and III, three syllable nouns by subjects II, III, and IV, two 

 syllable nouns completely by subjects I and IV, about half each 

 by subjects II and III, one syllable nouns completely by subjects 

 II and III, almost all by subject I and the rest by subject IV. 

 The exact relation of the numbers of words done by each will be 

 seen in the number of cases given in tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, re- 

 membering that these figures represent the number of successful 

 responses, not the entire number of stimulus words given to the 

 subject. Subjects I, II, and IV were men students, a Senior, 

 a Sophomore and a graduate respectively. Subject III was a 

 woman graduate in the Department of Psychology. 



Results for the adjective-noun and noun-adjective association 



The results for adjectives and nouns in experiment I are shown 

 in tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and in figures 1, 2, 3, and 4. 



Table 1. Here are shown the number of cases, the average re- 

 action times, and the mean variations for each of the six groups 

 of stimulus words, one, two, and three syllable stimulus adjec- 

 tives and nouns, for each of four subjects. There are no results 

 on three syllable nouns for subject I nor on any adjectives for 

 subject IV. The order in which these words were given is to be 

 kept hi mind. This was serially through one, two, and three 

 syllable adjectives, and the nouns then in the same way. For 

 subjects II and III the results are uniform. There is a definite 



