Abstract
An 80-word free word association list was administered individually to a sample of elderly men and women on two occasions, 1 week apart. Elderly persons were found to exhibit the same enduring free word association response sets (the tendency to give a predominance of one or another specific class of associate; e.g., contrast) found in earlier studies of children. Although the response sets of the elderly were reliable, as was found in studies of younger persons, the majority of their specific word pairs were different. It was concluded that individual differences in cognitive dictionaries of the elderly are represented better by hierarchies of association principles that differ in probability of use than by hierarchies of specific word-word affinities.
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Moran, L. J. Generality of word-association response sets. Psychological Monographs, 1966, 80 (4, Whole No. 612).
Moran, L. J., & Swartz, J. D. Longitudinal study of cognitive dictionaries from ages nine to seventeen. Developmental Psychology, 1970, 3, 21–28.
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The authors wish to thank Keith F. Bell and Madeline D. Norwood for their assistance.
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Swartz, J.D., Moran, L.J. & Cleland, C.C. Cognitive dictionary structure of the elderly. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 16, 383–384 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329573
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329573