Effect of Injected Adrenalin on an Avoidance Response in the Rat

It was hypothesized that slight modifications in word association test (WAT) instructions would have no discernable effect on the responses of college students, but would produce significantly different response hierarchies generated by young children. Seventy-five adults and 375 children gave WAT responses to 32 stimulus words. One-third of the Ss, at each of six grade levels, was given standard WAT instructions; one-third was given a practice session with 10 additional words; and the remainder were instructed to respond to stimulus words with the “first thing” that came to mind. Although the different instructional sets had no discernable effect on the adult Ss, they had a significant effect (ps < .05) upon the number of (a) multiple-word and nonword responses, (b) paradigmatic responses, and (c) idiosyncratic responses produced by the children. These differences suggest that caution be used in the interpretation of WAT responses provided by young Ss.