Associational fluency as a function of stimulus abstractness.

IN A RECENT paper, Cofer and Shevitz (1) analysed the relationship between fluency of verbal associations and the commonness or rarity of stimulus words. Reliable differences were found between the numbers of associations elicited by stimulus words which varied in commonness as determined by word-frequenc y counts. The importance of the Cofer and Shevitz study, like that of Haagen (2), lies in the fact that it gives clearer definition to properties of verbal stimuli. The present study considers an additional dimension of stimulus variability. Here the commonness-rarity difference is held constant and stimuli are chosen which vary along an abstract-conc rete dimension. Both Jung (3) and Woodworth (10) have noted that association time (delay between presentation of the stimulus word and the subject's response) is usually shorter for "concrete" nouns than for either "abstract" nouns or adjectives, although their definitions of abstract and concrete are not made explicit. Accordingly, the hypothesis to be examined here is that concrete nouns will be more provocative as stimulus words, i.e. will elicit more associational responses, than abstract nouns or adjectives. METHOD