STUDYING CONTROLLED WORD ASSOCIATIONS 415 



EXPERIMENT III 



This experiment was carried out in its present brief scope 

 merely to get some indication of the probable course of the 

 experiment on a large scale. It consisted in repeating for two 

 successive days the identical lists of day 10 of the regular series. 

 The purpose was to see the course of the reaction tune. For 

 this reason the subject was not told that these lists were repeti- 

 tions, but merely that he might possibly recognize some words 

 as having been given before, to take no note of this but to react 

 as usual with the first adjective or noun thought of, and to make 

 no effort to duplicate his response for the same stimulus word. 

 This work was done immediately at the close of the regular ten 

 days' work by the same eight subjects. 



Results for experiment III 



The results are shown in table 15. On the whole there is a 

 decrease in reaction time with each repetition of the same stim- 

 ulus words, both adjectives and nouns. Subject V, however, 

 did not conform to this type of reaction except in two out of a 

 possible eight drops in reaction time. Unfortunately we have 

 no note of any unusual behavior during these three days that might 

 account for his eccentricity. If we exclude his results entirely 

 the exceptions are few, only 1 increase as against 27 decreases for 

 nouns and only 5 increases as against 23 decreases in reaction tune 

 for adjectives. 



The response words given were usually repetitions in spite of 

 the fact that most of the subjects did not recognize on the second 

 day that the words were duplicates of those of the previous day, 

 and in spite of the instructions given them in regard to recogniz- 

 ing a duplicate word. The subjects all "caught on" by the 

 third day that the lists were duplicates ; if one of them gave a new 

 response word he usually commented on the fact to himself. 



