Association Structures Of Bright Children At Ages Nine And Twelve

The factor structure of free word associations of children, age 9 and 12, was the same as that for adults. Idiodynamic associative sets of 9-year-old children predicted their commonality scores, but not their reaction times. Both of these variables were predicted by the idiodynamic sets of 12-year-old children. It was speculated that idiodynamic associative sets reflect the organization (independent of culture) of the personal word "dictionary" evolved by children in preschool years, that a "common" (dependent upon culture) association hierarchy evolves independently of the "dictionary," and that variability in free word association dependent variables is a partial function of conflict between these two association hierarchies.