STUDYING CONTROLLED WORD ASSOCIATIONS 



417 



Double associations were required. For an adjective stimulus 

 word, the subject must think of a noun applicable to the ad- 

 jective and respond orally with a verb having this noun as sub- 

 ject. In this way the first association was silent, the second 

 spoken. The verb given might be either transitive or intransi- 

 tive, but auxiliaries were prohibited. With the transitive verbs, 

 the association was made in the reverse order, back to a noun 

 as its subject (silent) and then to an adjective (spoken) modifying 

 this noun. Intransitive verbs were chosen for this type of re- 

 action as a check on the backward direction of the association, 

 otherwise the association might be made forward to an object 

 of the verb and its modifier. 



Results for experiment IV 



The results are shown in table 16. With the two exceptions 

 in the three syllable words, there is a uniformly large reaction time 



TABLE 16 

 Reaction times for double associations 



for the backward association from verbs to adjectives. This 

 results agrees with the comments of the subjects when asked 

 which was the easier. The backward association with some ex- 

 ceptions was felt to require the greater effort. The increase in 

 reaction tune varies, to be sure, between wide limits among the 

 different subjects and for stimulus words of different lengths, 

 from 32 sigma to 1312 sigma, with an average increase of 

 571 sigma. For the two exceptions for subjects V and VIII, 



PSYCHOBIOLOQY, VOL. I, NO. 6 



