Neuroskeptic posted recently about this online project called "The Small World of Words," which is an effort to create the largest word-association database ever by having lots of people complete this interactive exercise.
They show you fourteen words, one at a time, and you type in the first three words that come to your mind in the three empty fields below the prompt-word.
If nothing comes to your mind, you're supposed to type "no response." I had one word where that happened (the word was "grief", and instead of seeing an image I could describe, or a color, or hearing the word echo and mutate into various sound-alikes, I actually felt an attenuated version of grief itself), so I entered that into all three fields.
They do want everyone taking the test to be a fluent English speaker, but other than that there are no restrictions. And you can be from anywhere, and you don't have to be a native speaker --- just fluent.
Probably, if your English is good enough for you to be reading this blog, you can participate in this study.
Thanks for posting about this - it was absolutely fascinating. It inspired a blog post of my own, which I haven't finished yet because I ran out of time, but yeah. Thank you. That was really cool.
ReplyDeleteYay! I'm glad you took it, too. I think the project rocks and the more people who contribute to it, the more awesome it will end up being.
ReplyDeleteI just launched another project on word meaning (spec. verb meaning), which takes a different look at meaning that the SWoW project (we investigate components of meaning, rather than associations).
ReplyDeleteYou can find the project here and read the project announcement here.