Free Word Associations Correspond to Contiguities Between Words in Texts*

Abstract

A free associative response is the first word a person comes up with after perceiving another word, the so-called associative stimulus. People commonly associate hot to cold, church to priest, and hard to work. According to traditional association theory this behaviour is the result of learning by contiguity: “Objects once experienced together tend to become associated in the imagination, so that when any one of them is thought of, the others are likely to be thought of also, in the same order of sequence or coexistence as before” (James, 1890). This explanation has been rejected by cognitive psychologists who explain the production of associations as the result of symbolic processes which make use of complex semantic structures (Clark, 1970). We will show, however, that human associative responses can be predicted from contiguities between words in language use. This finding supports the hypothesis that the behaviour of participants in the free association task can be explained by associative learning.