Response faults on word association as a function of associative difficulty and of affective connotation of the words.

Conducted an experiment to adjudicate among factors influencing response faults on the word association technique. Associative difficulty and affective connotation were manipulated independently as dimensions of verbal stimuli. 60 words, varying in associative difficulty and in affective connotation, were administered as a word association test to undergraduate Ss: 20 high and 20 low scorers on a test of neuroticism. Half of each group were tested under stress and half under standard conditions. The affective connotation of the words elicited lengthened latencies and "misremembering" on retest, whereas associative difficulty evoked lengthened latencies and forgetting of response on retest. Stress and neuroticism did not influence word association. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)