association experiment. Methods of associative experiment in modern linguistics

Philological sciences

Keywords: THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE; LINGUISTIC PICTURE OF THE WORLD; LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS; ASSOCIATIVE EXPERIMENT; COGNITIVE CULTUROLOGY; THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE; LANGUAGE PICTURE OF THE WORLD; LANGUAGE CONSCIOUSNESS; ASSOCIATIVE EXPERIMENT; COGNITIVE CULTURAL STUDIES.

Annotation: This article substantiates the effectiveness of the use of psycholinguistic methods in the field of linguoculturological knowledge. The results of the study can be used for further development of a special culturological direction — cognitive culturology. The concept theory proposed in this paper can become methodological basis for the reconstruction of specific cultural concepts and concept spheres. These articles can be used in the courses of linguistics, regional studies, lexicology, stylistics, in special courses on linguoculturology, and also serve to understand the cultural values ​​of a certain people for representatives of another language space.

One of the main categories modern culture is a concept that allows you to overcome the gap between the objective world and the inner mentality of a person, as well as to include in scientific knowledge concepts of irrational knowledge of the world. According to Yu.S. Stepanova, the concept is the main unit of culture in the mental world of a person. A. Vezhbitskaya defines the concept as “an object from the “Ideal” world, having a name and reflecting certain culturally conditioned ideas of a person about the “Reality” world.

The term “concept” itself (from Latin conceptus – “thought”, “concept”), according to the Concise Dictionary of Cognitive Terms, “corresponds to the idea of ​​those meanings that a person operates in the processes of thinking and which reflect the content of experience and knowledge, the content the results of all human activity and the processes of cognition of the world in the form of certain "quanta" of knowledge.

In this regard, a relatively new direction in psycholinguistics and cultural studies has arisen - cognitive linguoculturology, which makes it possible to trace the relationship of linguistic forms with the cultural characteristics of people of different ethnic groups. In this direction, the consciousness of a person, which is directly influenced by the cultural characteristics of his society, also plays an equally important role. In cognitive cultural studies, the concept is presented as a unit of structured and unstructured knowledge, which forms the cognition of an individual and culture as a whole, while culture itself is “the interaction of consciousness with outside world» . Therefore, the use of a cognitive approach and psycholinguistic methods in tracing the evolution of various concepts and the reconstruction of cultural concepts allows us to gain new knowledge about the formation language picture world, peculiarities of thinking of representatives different cultures, value priorities people, as well as ways of perceiving and understanding the world around us within a certain cultural society. The connection of the concept with the picture of the world is also emphasized by the authors of the Concise Dictionary of Cognitive Terms, defining it as a term that serves to explain the mental or mental resources of our consciousness and the information structure that reflects the knowledge and experience of a person; operational meaningful unit of memory, mental lexicon, conceptual system and language of the brain (lingua mentalis), the whole picture of the world reflected in the human psyche.

In the monograph "Language Circle: Personality, Concepts, Discourse" Professor V.I. Karasik notes that "the main unit of linguoculturology is the cultural concept - a multidimensional semantic formation in which the value, figurative and conceptual sides are distinguished" . Within the framework of linguoculturology and psycholinguistics, the concept is defined as a unit of individual and collective knowledge, which has a cultural marking and has a linguistic expression. The cultural concept itself is, first of all, a mental entity that reflects the “spirit of the people”.

The reconstruction of the concept in linguoculturology is based on the approaches of Yu. Stepanov, A. Vezhbitskaya and the school of logical analysis of language. Yu.S. Stepanov proposed a semiotic method, which is aimed at analyzing the formation of a cultural concept. This approach is characterized by the involvement of a broad philological and cultural context. According to this technique, cultural concepts are analyzed as a “layered” formation, in which it is first necessary to identify the “literal meaning” of the word (internal form), presented “in the form of etymology”, then the “historical” (passive) layer of the concept, and at the last stage its current layer. According to the methodology of A. Vezhbitskaya, the study should begin with the choice of the name of the concept. In this approach, it is important to take into account the frequency of the use of the name and the "cultural development" of the corresponding fragment of the linguistic picture of the world. This method of research also involves the analysis of diverse means of naming concepts. However, a unified approach to the concept research methodology in modern linguistic and cultural studies has not yet been developed.

In our opinion, one of the most preferred methods for reconstructing the concepts of culture is a psycholinguistic technique - associative experiment .

Psycholinguistics, a discipline that emerged in 1953, is located at the intersection of psychology and linguistics and studies the relationship between language, thinking and consciousness.

In psycholinguistics, there are three main methods for collecting linguistic material, which are borrowed from experimental psychology.

1. The method of introspection or self-observation (from Latin introspecto “look inside”) was proposed by W. Wundt. The essence of this method is to observe your own mental processes without the use of tools or standards.

2. Method of observation in vivo- involves the explanation of a mental phenomenon in the process of a specially organized situation of its perception.

3. Experimental method. This method is currently the main research method in psycholinguistics. In turn, it distinguishes several methods, one of which is an associative experiment. association experiment- a term that has established itself in psychology to refer to a special projective method for studying the motivation of a person, which was proposed at the beginning of the 20th century. C. G. Jung and almost simultaneously with him M. Wertheimer and D. Klein.

The procedure for conducting an associative experiment is as follows. Subjects are required to respond to a specific set of stimulus words as quickly as possible with any word that comes to mind. Thus, the type of associations that arise, the frequency of associations of the same type, the magnitude of latent periods (the time between the stimulus word and the subject's response), behavioral and physiological reactions, etc., are recorded.

An association experiment is also often used as a group test, for example, to determine the frequency of use of a particular word or to identify the prevalence of a particular cultural value in a given society.

In this regard, we conducted a psycholinguistic test on the example of representatives of Russian and Tajik culture. We used the associative method or otherwise the psycholinguistic method on the topic "Beauty". Our target audience was students of the branch of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov in Dushanbe, as well as residents of Tajikistan who are not native Russian speakers. The experiment involved 25 people.

These persons were asked to write all the associations, including sayings, proverbs, phraseological units that arise with the word beauty, in Russian and Tajik languages, with the inherent characteristics of Russian and Tajik culture. Here we have listed all the associations that we received during the study (Table 1.).

Table 1. Associative experiment on the example of the word "beauty".

In applied psycholinguistics, associative dictionaries have been created on the basis of an associative experiment. It should also be noted that most of the reactions given in the associative dictionaries were obtained mainly from university and college students aged 17 to 25 years (in this case, stimulus words were given on mother tongue subjects). The first associative dictionary is the Dictionary of Associative Norms of the Russian Language, which was compiled by a team of authors led by Alexei Alekseevich Leontiev. On the this moment the most complete dictionary of this type is the "Russian Associative Dictionary" by Yuri Nikolaevich Karaulov, Yuri Alexandrovich Sorokin, Evgeny Fedorovich Tarasov, Natalia Vladimirovna Ufimtseva. It consists of approximately 1300 stimulus words.

Bibliography

1. Vezhbitskaya A. Semantic universals and description of languages. M., 1999.
2. Vezhbitskaya A. Prototypes and invariants //A. Vezhbitskaya. Language. Culture. Cognition./Answer. ed. M. A. Krongauz. M., 1996.
3. Karpenko L. A., Petrovsky A. V., Yaroshevsky M. G. Brief psychological dictionary. - Rostov-on-Don: PHOENIX. 1998.
4. Karasik V. I. Language circle: personality, concepts, discourse: monograph / Karasik V. I. - 2nd ed. — M.: Gnosis, 2004.
5. Kubryakova E. S., Demyankov V. Z., Pankrats Yu. G., Luzina L. G. Concise Dictionary cognitive terms. M., 1996.
6. Rezhabek E.Ya. In search of rationality. M., 2007.
7. Serova I.G. Conceptual analysis in linguoculturology: methods and possibilities // Questions of cognitive linguistics. 2007. No. 1.
8. Stepanov Yu. S. Constants: Dictionary of Russian culture. Research experience. M., 1997.

The concept of "meaning" is an interdisciplinary term, it is studied by many sciences: linguistics, psychology, etc., so there are many methods for studying meaning. There are the following methods for studying the value:

1) the method of subjective scaling, which was borrowed from classical psychophysics. The subject must evaluate the "similarity of values" using some scale. The method is a simple and direct method for obtaining a semantic similarity matrix.

2) the semantic differential method, which is one of the methods for constructing semantic spaces. The method is a combination of scaling procedures and the controlled association method.

3) the method of personal semantic differentials, which is based on adjectives denoting personality and character traits, and focused on assessing oneself or another person.

4) the technique of personal constructs by J. Kelly, which is a method of operational study of "implicit personality theories".

5) A.R. Luria and O.S. Vinogradova, which is a conditioned reflex method for studying the semantic similarity of meanings.

6) the substitution method used for the semantic analysis of rather narrow groups of vocabulary. A modification of this method is the method of incomplete sentences with a gap, where filling in the missing link with interchangeable words indicates the semantic similarity of these words.

7) the classification method developed by Miller, which allows you to study the semantic relationships between different objects, directly operating on the material (image) under study, without resorting to indirect assessments through verbal descriptions.

8) methods of indirect mediated study of semantics, where the establishment of semantic connections of the studied material is carried out indirectly, through the nature and characteristics of the course of mental processes of processing this material; such as verbal learning, memorization and recognition, switching attention, etc.

9) an associative experiment, which is, perhaps, “the most developed technique of semantic analysis.” We will dwell on this method in more detail.

The idea of ​​a combination or connection of ideas through their associations by contiguity in time and space was expressed by Aristotle. He believed that the mind of a person at birth is a tabula rasa - a blank slate on which experience imprints its marks by associating them.

Such representations of Aristotle in the 17th century were developed by John Locke, who distinguished between simple and complex ideas. Simple ideas are elementary ideas that arise on the basis of sensory experience or the experience of reflection; complex - ideas of a derivative nature, which consist of a series simple ideas. Such ideas are amenable to analysis and can be decomposed into a number of simpler components. Locke was thus the founder of the theory of associations - the concept that complex ideas are formed by combining or associating simple ideas.

Another English empiricist - George Berkeley - used the theory of associations to explain the process of cognition. He believed that knowledge is a combination of simple ideas, separate mental elements, i.e. complex representations are combinations of a number of simple ones that arise in us through the senses. According to Berkeley, the associative perception of an object is acquired by us in the process of learning.

David Hume identified two laws of associations: the law of similarity or similarity - the more similar ideas are to each other, the more likely associations arise between them; and the law of contiguity, or association, in time and space—the closer the ideas are in space and time, the more likely associations arise between them. David Hartley identified another third law of association: he believed that the repetition of impressions is also a sufficient basis for the emergence of associations.

As a matter of fact, association, more precisely, its understanding in the theory of associations, is the very process that modern psychologists call learning. However, the contribution of empiricists to the formation scientific psychology high enough.

In the early history of psychology, words were widely used in the then dominant stimulus-response paradigm. So, one of the topics of research in the Leipzig laboratory of W. Wundt was verbal associations. The subjects were asked to respond with just one word per word - irritant. To clarify the nature of verbal associations, Wundt proceeded to classify the types of connections found as a result of reactions to stimuli consisting of one word.

Herman Ebbinghaus approached the issue from a different angle. Before him, the generally accepted methods were the study of already established associations, researchers tried to determine the nature of already established connections.

Ebbinghaus formed associations. In this way, he could control the conditions for the emergence of associations and, consequently, make studies of memory processes more objective.

In the same period of the history of psychology, the origins of the actual associative experiment originate. D. Miller describes the history of its origin as follows: Sir Francis Galton in 1879. I tried to conduct an associative experiment. He wrote 75 words on the cards, and a few days later he took the cards one at a time, timed the time from the moment when his eyes stopped on the word, and until the moment when the word he read caused him two different thoughts. He wrote down these thoughts for each word, but declined to publish the results because "they lay bare the essence of human thought ... and reveal the anatomy of thinking with such vivacity and certainty that it is unlikely that it will be possible ... to make it the property of the world."

Almost 30 years later, in 1906, Carl Jung developed the associative experiment in the version in which it is still used today. The idea of ​​the verbal-associative test came to Jung after one of his colleagues told him about the associative experiments of W. Wundt. With Jung, this test looks like this: the analyst reads a series of words one after the other to the patient, who, in response to each word, must say the first thing that comes to his mind. This measures reaction time, changes in respiratory rate, skin electrical conductivity and other parameters that may indicate the patient's emotional reaction. If these parameters change, then it is concluded that there are certain emotional reasons associated with the proposed word or with a possible answer. The scheme of a modern associative experiment is the same as that of Jung: the subject is presented with a word - a stimulus and asked to give the first associations that come to mind, and it is possible as a free associative experiment, where the subject is not limited in the choice of possible associations; and directed, where the flow of its associations is limited according to the instructions within the framework of a certain grammatical class.

A variation of the free associative experiment is a paired associative experiment, the essence of which is that stimuli are presented simultaneously to two subjects, and they simultaneously respond with any words that come to their mind. A paired associative experiment makes it possible to establish a leader in a dyad: a leader is characterized by more a short time reactions and imposing their associations on the second subject. There is also a chain associative experiment, in which the total volume of associations produced per unit of time is measured, while omitting the duration of the latent period of association formation.

Currently, the associative experiment is used in psychoanalysis, where there is a technique of so-called free association, according to which the patient must communicate his thoughts unconditionally to the psychoanalyst and not make attempts to concentrate during this. Thus, the associative experiment is used as a psychotherapeutic technique.

On the basis of the associative experiment, lie detectors have been developed based on the relationship of the word - stimulus with the reaction time of the subject, respiratory rate, pulse, skin electrical conductivity and other physiological parameters.

The associative experiment is successfully used in ethnopsychological research. It is used to explore the meanings of words different peoples by comparing the responses of subjects of different nationalities. A.A. Zalevskaya, for example, studied foreign language learners to find out how the perceived word is refracted through the prism of the subject's previous experience in the native and studied languages. To this end, she compared the associative links between words foreign language with associative skills of students of different nationalities. The associative experiment is used as a research method in pathopsychology, because allows you to highlight unconscious moments, thereby revealing the distortion of the meanings of words for patients, shows the distortion of their thinking. In neuropsychological research, the method of associative experiment makes it possible to diagnose microorganic brain lesions (Ganzin I.V.), to study the formation of the meaning of a word in ontogenesis (Beresneva N.I., Perm).

An associative experiment is used in experimental psychosemantics, psycholinguistics as one of the methods for highlighting semantic relationships. For this purpose, the experiment is carried out as follows: a large number The subjects are presented with a list of words and are instructed to respond to each word (stimulus) with another word (reaction). Thus, we get a list of words - reactions to each word - a stimulus and the frequency of occurrence of each of the reactions, which is then processed and interpreted.

The associative experiment received such a large scope of application due to its accessibility, simplicity, and ease of use, tk. it can be carried out simultaneously with a large group of subjects who work with the meaning in the "mode of use", which makes it possible to highlight some of the unconscious components of the meaning. The nature of the associations depends on the sex, age, educational level, profession of the subjects. This means that the associative technique reflects both the cognitive structures behind linguistic meanings and the individual characteristics of the subjects, their personal meanings.

A significant drawback of the method is its sensitivity to phylogenetic and syntactic similarities. Most of associations due to speech stamps, clichés. Also, part of the associations can be caused by objects or phenomena of the environment under test. Some subjects tend to give socially acceptable or neutral associations. Some of the subjects may answer not with the first word that comes to mind, but with some other one that he considers more acceptable. The associative experiment is also influenced by the profession of the subject and geographical conditions in which he lives. So, according to A.A. Leontiev, a resident of Yaroslavl responds to the “brush” stimulus - mountain ash, Dushanbe - grape, conductor - smooth and soft, nurse - amputation, builder - hair.

These shortcomings are partially removed by the fact that, as a rule, an associative experiment for the purpose of psychological, psycholinguistic, etc. research is conducted on very large samples - at least one hundred people (usually one hundred or more people take part in the study).

And his followers assumed that uncontrolled associations are a symbolic or sometimes even a direct projection of the inner, often unconscious content of consciousness.

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Experiment procedure

For a mass experiment, the subjects are collected in one room, instructed and motivated. After that, stimulus material is distributed in the form of questionnaires containing a list of stimulus words. Then the actual experiment takes place, during which the subjects for 10-15 minutes next to each stimulus word of the questionnaire write one word-reaction, which first came to the subject's head after reading the stimulus word. After that, questionnaires filled out by the subjects are collected. Usually each subject is given 100 words and 7-10 minutes for answers. Often the experimenter dictates stimuli.

Instruction for the subject

Now you will receive a list of words, you will have to read word by word sequentially and write next to each word the first word that comes to your mind. At the same time, you must write extremely quickly, without hesitation, the speed of your reactions is prerequisite work in the experiment.

Varieties

1. Free association experiment.
2. Directed associative experiment.
3. Chain association experiment.

Interpretation of answers

When analyzing the answers of the associative experiment, syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations are distinguished, first of all. When classifying associations, one usually considers the relationships that arise in a stimulus-response pair. There are several methods of classification.

J. Miller classifies reactions in terms of identifying semantic features, or parameters:

1. contrast (male - female),
2. similarity (fast - fast),
3. submission (animal - dog),
4. subordination (dog - cat),
5. generalization (cucumber - vegetable),
6. assonance (mouth - mole),
7. part - whole (day - week),
8. addition (forward - march), etc.

Charles Osgood distinguishes associations by consonance and by meaning, while noting that it is semantic features that should be decisive. A.P. Klimenko adheres to the same point of view. It distinguishes the following types of associations:

1. phonetic, in which there is a consonance between the stimulus and the reaction, but the semantic justification of the association is not expressed (or very weakly expressed) (day - shadow, flax - maple);
2. derivational, based on the unity of the root of the stimulus and reaction, but not reflecting clear and uniform for different words semantic relationships between stimuli and response (yellow - jaundice, yellow - bile);
3. paradigmatic associations that differ from the stimulus in no more than one semantic feature (table - chair, high - low, get - buy);
4. syntagmatic associations that, together with the stimulus, make up a subordinating combination (the sky is blue, the woman is beautiful, get a ticket, tall is a man);
5. thematic (salt - earth, dark - night);
6. quotation (old man - sea, white - steamer, uncle - Styopa);
7. grammatical (table - table, run - run).

After the 20th century, the experimental method came to linguistics. He opened up new possibilities for studying the patterns of language activity and made it possible to create the necessary situations. On the crest new wave association experiment. The psychological dictionary interprets this term as a way of studying the motivation of an individual. The purpose of this technique is to find associations that have previously formed in a person.

Scientists have identified 3 varieties of it:

1. free (the subject answers with the first word that comes to mind, without limitation of semantic and formal characteristics);
2. directed (with a restriction in the selection of words, depending on part-of-speech, gender, number, etc.);
3. chain (generally similar to free, but has its own characteristics).

The division of associations into syntagmatic and paradigmatic ones is widespread. In the first case, the stimulus and response belong to different parts speech, in the second - on the contrary. Genera-species relationships are also taken into account. Pay attention to antonymic and synonymous pairs.

Free associations

The simplest of the methods this series. It operates according to the "stimulus-response" scheme. First appeared in psychiatry, then migrated to other areas social activities. It is still used to detect schizophrenia, because patients with this disease find rather strange connections between words.

Scientists have put forward a hypothesis about the grouping in the human mind of all names into complex formations, called associative fields. Everyone has them, but they are strictly individual in terms of content and strength of connections. This can be seen when they are updated during the response. It affects the type of activity, place of residence and age. For a conductor, the “brush” is smooth, for a builder it is hair, for a resident of Moldova it is grape, and for a nurse, amputation comes to mind.

Directed associations

Indispensable when you need to find deep and unstable connections. The researcher gives the subject a task with restrictions, cutting off the path to generally accepted answers. For example, in 2 out of 3 cases, the Russian-speaking person will choose the antonym “hot” for the word “cold”. Directional amplification is allowed. Enough to give a stimulus "cold water". Here, with a probability of up to 90%, the answer will be “hot water”. Unnecessary associations are cut off (such as “warm day” and “cold day”). You can narrow the focus even more by suggesting an opposite for the phrase "the water is cold in the kettle." It is noteworthy that with a probability of 90% for "cold water in the sea" the answer will be different - "warm".

In this way, you can get many different results, reveal deep associative connections, find a comprehensive approach to the study of language activity and its mechanisms. The method of continuing unfinished sentences is a subspecies of directed experiment. Widely used in psychodiagnostics. Particularly indicative is the selection of adjectives for nouns (water is cold, blue, blue, dirty, etc.).

Chain associations

This experiment involves the selection maximum number words in a limited time (often 1 minute is given). There is a spontaneous, uncontrolled reproduction of the content of the subconscious and consciousness of the subject. The researcher pays attention to the structure of the produced series. But there is still a significant drawback that violates the system. The subject may move away from the initial stimulus and begin to give out associations to his own previous answer. When the instructions are strictly followed, the listed words are combined in meaning into several semantic nests.

Linguistic association experiment- used to assess the qualitative specifics of thinking. The test is also used for psychoanalytic purposes, for the study of higher nervous activity. When conducting a study, it is proposed to bring the first association that came to mind to the presented words.

The associative experiment is widely known and actively used in psycholinguistics, psychology, sociology, and psychiatry.

The emergence of the free word association method is associated with the name of Francis Galton (1822-1911). In 1879 he published the results of his associative experiments. Inviting the subject to respond to the stimulus word with the first word association that came to mind, Galton compiled lists of 75 words and opened them in turn to the subject (sometimes he himself acted as such). Using a stopwatch, he recorded the response time.

There are several types of associative experiment:

1. Free association experiment. Subjects are not given any restrictions on reactions.
2. Directed associative experiment. The subject is asked to give associations of a certain grammatical or semantic class (for example, choose an adjective for a noun).
3. Chain association experiment. The subjects are asked to respond to the stimulus with several associations - for example, give 10 reactions within 20 seconds.

Most researchers today tend to consider the associative experiment as a technique for studying the interests and attitudes of the individual. However, it should be noted that the interpretation of the results obtained is determined by the theoretical views of researchers. Therefore, the question of the validity of the methodology cannot be unambiguously resolved without correlation with the theoretical positions of its creators.

There are special dictionaries of associative norms, among the well-known ones is the dictionary of J. Deese. In Russian, the first dictionary of this kind was the Dictionary of Associative Norms of the Russian Language, ed. A.A. Leontiev.

Currently, the most complete dictionary in Russian is the "Russian Associative Dictionary" (compiled by: Yu.N. Karaulov, Yu.A. Sorokin, E.F. Tarasov, N.V. Ufimtseva, G.A. Cherkasova). It includes the following parts: v. 1. Direct dictionary: from stimulus to response; v. 2. Reverse dictionary: from response to stimulus; v. 3-6 are also direct and reverse dictionaries of the other two lists of words. This dictionary contains 1277 stimuli, which is slightly less than the number of words used by speakers in everyday speech (1500-3000); 12,600 different words were recorded as answers, and in total - more than a million reactions.

Experiment procedure. For a mass experiment, the subjects are collected in one room, instructed and motivated. After that, stimulus material is distributed in the form of questionnaires containing a list of stimulus words. Then the actual experiment takes place, during which the subjects for 10-15 minutes next to each stimulus word of the questionnaire write one word-reaction, which first came to the subject's head after reading the stimulus word. After that, questionnaires filled out by the subjects are collected. Usually each subject is given 100 words and 7-10 minutes for answers.

Possible word sets:

1st option: closet -, city -, matchmaker -, branch -, feather -, sparrow -, rabbit -, candle -, frame -, road -, dress -, ink -, shoes -, cat -, tomato -, thread -, notebook -, sun -, pillow -, day -, board -, street -, saw -, pencil -, glass -.

Option 2: bread -, lamp -, singing -, wheel -, beauty -, war -, air -, development -, bell -, cave -, infinity -, moon -, brother -, treatment -, ax -, fall -, deceit -, head -, doubt -, game -, goal -, depth -, people -, grass -, quarrel -, butterfly -, search -, sadness -, conscience -.

3. option: fire -, garden -, laughter -, forest -, red -, dress -, north -, love -, evening -, joy -, sleep -, bread -, business -, illness -, labor -, brother -, resentment -, thunderstorm -, husband -, spring -, table -, past -, honor -, space -, health -.

When analyzing the results of the study, the following are taken into account: the latent period (normally from 0.5 to 2 s), the qualitative characteristics of the responses.

According to the quality of the answers, speech reactions are divided into:

- higher speech reactions(general-specific, individually-specific, abstract);

- primitive verbal reactions(indicative, consonant, refusal, extra-signal, interjection, persevering, echolalic);

- atactic reactions(corresponding to dissociated thinking).

Patients with schizophrenia are dominated by atactic (food - mole) or consonant (people - freak) reactions. This is due to the peculiarities of thinking disorders in this disease, consonance associations, etc.

Adequate performance of the study is considered if the highest speech reactions are 98-100%, among them general-specific - 68-72%, individual-specific - 8-12%, abstract - 20%, lower, atactic and verbose reactions are absent.

Interpretation of answers

When analyzing the answers of the associative experiment, syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations are distinguished, first of all. When classifying associations, one usually considers the relationships that arise in a stimulus-response pair. There are several methods of classification.

J. Miller classifies reactions in terms of identifying semantic features, or parameters:

1. contrast (male - female),
2. similarity (fast - fast),
3. submission (animal - dog),
4. subordination (dog - cat),
5. generalization (cucumber - vegetable),
6. assonance (mouth - mole),
7. part - whole (day - week),
8. addition (forward - march), etc.

Charles Osgood distinguishes associations by consonance and meaning, while noting that it is semantic features that should be decisive. A.P. Klimenko adheres to the same point of view. It distinguishes the following types of associations:

1. phonetic, in which there is a consonance between the stimulus and the reaction, but the semantic justification of the association is not expressed (or very weakly expressed) (day - shadow, flax - maple);
2. word-building, based on the unity of the root of the stimulus and reaction, but not reflecting the semantic relationships between stimuli and reaction that are clear and uniform for different words (yellow - jaundice, yellow - bile);
3. paradigmatic associations that differ from the stimulus in no more than one semantic feature (table - chair, high - low, get - buy);
4. syntagmatic associations that, together with the stimulus, make up a subordinating combination (the sky is blue, the woman is beautiful, get a ticket, tall is a man);
5. thematic (salt - earth, dark - night);
6. quotation (old man - sea, white - steamer, uncle - Styopa);
7. grammatical (table - table, run - run).

Kent-Rozanov free association technique

Currently, such a technique is known as the Kent-Rozanov free association technique. It uses a set of 100 words as stimuli. Speech responses to these words are standardized on in large numbers mentally healthy persons, and determined specific gravity non-standard speech reactions (their correlation with standard ones). These data allow us to determine the degree of eccentricity, unusual thinking of specific subjects.