青年人和老年人词汇联想反应的研究

Study of word association for young and old people

目的:研究年龄对青年人和老年人词汇联想反应的影响。方法:采用Kent-Rosanoff词表中文对等词作为刺激词汇,分别对青年人(n=50)和老年人(n=50)进行词汇联想反应测验。采用χ2检验分析两组人群优势联想词汇的反应类型,如选择关系和连锁关系;采用方差分析两组人群联想词汇指标,如优势联想词汇的联想强度(ADOM)、联想词汇总数(NAR)、特异性联想词汇总数(NUR)等;采用图论和网络分析方法对两组人群的词汇联想网络结构图进行比较。结果:①联想反应类型中选择关系老年组显著高于青年组;②ADOM在老年组明显高于青年组,而NAR和NUR老年组显著低于青年组。③两组人群的汉语词汇联想网络均符合短连接路径、高云集系数的小世界网络特征;并且词汇联想网络中存在集散节点,点线分布幂值遵循无尺度网络的幂律分布特征。结论:两组人群的词汇联想反应类型和特征存在显著差异,词汇联想网络具有无尺度-小世界性网络的结构特征。

Objective：To investigate the differences of word association between young and old people from Chinese. Method：Word association data were obtained from two cohorts of Chinese. A free word association test was administered to young people （n=50） and old people （n=50）, with Kent-Rosanoff list as stimulus words, which had been translated into Chinese. Variability of the type of response across cohorts was examined in terms of Deese＇s criteria, which classify responses into either paradigmatic or syntagmatic relation; Three measures of response heterogeneity were calculated for each stimulus item： association frequency of the dominant response （ADOM）, number of all responses （NAR） and number of unique response（NUR）; The word association network of two cohorts of people were studied respectively using graph theory and network analysis methods. Result：Compared with young cohort, the old people elicited more paradigmatic responses than the young, so they made fewer syntagmatic responses. The old people also evidenced a characteristic pattern of responses,which showed marked increase in ADOM and reduction in NAR and NUR. Word association network both possessed small-world structure characterized by the combination of highly clustered neighborhoods and short average path length. Moreover, the distributions of the number of connections followed power laws that indicated scale-free pattern of connectivity, with most nodes having relatively few connections joined together through small number of hubs with many connections. Conclusion：Comparison of the word association between young and old people indicated that there was significant deviation between two cohorts. Scale-free and small-world network structures were found in word association network for both two cohorts.