WORD ASSOCIATIONS OF STUDENTS AT PREDOMINANTLY WHITE AND PREDOMINANTLY BLACK COLLEGES

ABSTRACT This study compared word association responses for college students in three geographic areas from four different kinds of colleges: (1) selective predominantly white colleges, (2) less selective predominantly white colleges, (3) selective predominantly black colleges, and (4) less selective predominantly black colleges. Stimulus words were chosen from those used in GRE verbal analogy and antonym items. Responses were tabulated separately by sex. There were a few words which evoked different responses from males and females, but geographic area apparently made no difference. A few stimulus words, mostly those relating to the “black experience,” evoked different association patterns from students at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges, but most stimulus words yielded similar response patterns from both kinds of college. There was a comparatively high level of “no response” for those stimulus words with a Thorndike‐Lorge word frequency count of 9 or fewer per million counted words. This most frequently happened at the non‐selective colleges, and particularly at the predominantly black non‐selective colleges. It was hypothesized that most often this occurred because the student was not acquainted with the word. A number of responses seemed to come from the student having mistaken the stimulus word for one of similar appearance.