STUDYING CONTROLLED WORD ASSOCIATIONS 399 



two, and three syllable nouns and adjectives were run in parallel 

 so that comparison between the groups would be entirely valid. 

 Therefore each day's series was made up of one list each of the 

 following words and give in this order : 



(1) One syllable adjectives 



(2) One syllable nouns 



(3) Two syllables adjectives 



(4) Two syllable nouns 



(5) Three syllable adjectives 



(6) Three syllable nouns 



The adjectives and nouns alternated on successive days in oc- 

 cupying the first position in the series. Nouns occurred first 

 on odd days and adjectives on even days. It was discovered 

 unfortunately that there were not enough selected one syllable 

 adjectives to cover ten days' work, in fact there were only 194 

 of them, enough for six days' work (180) and a few over. For 

 this reason it was possible to carry out the above procedure for 

 only six of the ten days. The remaining days' work was made 

 up only of two and three syllable adjectives and nouns. It was 

 necessary to drop one syllable nouns for the remainder of the 

 series in order that there might be an equal number of one syllable 

 adjectives and nouns for the comparison of their reaction times. 

 To make the number of two and three syllable adjectives and 

 nouns come out even for the remaining four days' work the fol- 

 lowing schedule was adopted: 



/Two lists each of 2 syllable nouns and adjectives 



Daws 7 and 9 < ^ ,. A * . 



(One list each of 3 syllable nouns and adjectives 



/Two lists each of 3 syllable nouns and adjectives 



Days 8 and 10 < _ 



(One list each ot 2 syllable nouns and adjectives 



This gave the following distribution of the 1800 stimulus words: 



1 syllable adjectives and nouns, each 180 360 



2 and 3 syllable adjectives and nouns, each 360 1440 



In addition to the regular ten days' work, three days' practise 

 work was given beforehand on the basis of the conclusion in 

 experiment I that the length of time required to become adapted 



