The Word Association Implications Test

Three experiments (N = 144 college students) tested and documented the relationship between incidental learning of diagnostic schemata with performance on the Word Association Implications Test (WAIT). Moreover, Experiment 1 showed that instruction in diagnostic cues did not improve WAIT scores, although an incentive did. Experiment 2 supported the "developing schemata" concept by showing that subjects need to interpret WAIT protocols before they can generate possible diagnostic clues. Experiment 3 showed that inductive reasoning and viewing the task as more play- and game-like (vs. work- and test-like) predicted WAIT scores over and above the influence of incidental learning of schemata, in sum, results suggest that an heuristic discovery-oriented approach is most successful in learning "to read between the lines" of word associations. Discussion addresses the value of heuristic versus algorithmic approaches to the learning of personality assessment.