STUDYING CONTROLLED WORD ASSOCIATIONS 395 



The reverse reaction therefore always requires greater effort 

 and gives a longer reaction time. In connection with this pos- 

 sible explanation an experiment is under way in this laboratory 

 to test out the same reactions on French, Italian, and Spanish 

 subjects where the order of adjectives and nouns is on the whole 

 the reverse from the English order. If this language explana- 

 tion has validity, we will expect to find that the adjective-noun 

 reaction is longer than the noun-adjective reaction. 



A contributory reason for the reaction time being longer for 

 nouns than for adjectives lies in the fact that many nouns are 

 commonly never used with a modifying adjective, e.g., rote and 

 ounce, and it is relatively difficult to find adjectives to modify 

 them. This lengthens the reaction time. This was no factor 

 however in Experiment II which follows, where all such words 

 were eliminated. Subjects invariably stated that it is more 

 difficult to respond with adjectives to noun stimulus words 

 than with nouns to adjective stimulus words. They were 

 questioned in regard to this and their naive explanations all fell 

 into this general scheme; an adjective always suggests some 

 object having that quality, but a noun suggests no particular 

 aspect of itself, making it necessary to "feel" for an attribute. 

 Some notes taken of comments by different subjects may be of 

 interest here. 



Subject II. November 17 (first day on nouns) . Nouns much harder 

 than adjectives. Have to think backwards then forwards to see if 

 adjective fits. Have to think harder but time seems to go much faster 

 for a list. (This is not so time really much longer.) 



Subject I. December 10 (first day on nouns). Likes adjectives 

 better than nouns, because nouns call up an object with no particular 

 emphasis on its qualities, while the adjective can not appear without 

 an object. It feels as if the nouns were going faster. 



Subject IV. November 22 (first day on nouns). Felt as if doing 

 poorly. Ought to be able to think of better adjectives less common- 

 place ones. 



2. The reaction time for these types of controlled associations 

 increases directly with the number of syllables in the stimulus 

 word. This holds for both adjectives and nouns. The one 



