From words to meaning: Association networks and semantic processing

The project consists of three parts: (1) to elaborate the existing word association network, (2) to investigate the semantic properties of a network that is constructed from the word association data set and (3) to explore neuropsychological applications of word association data.  The first part consists of further developing and enlarging the world’s largest word association data set, in several languages. In the second part, the network’s predictions for similarity-based phenomena like asymmetric similarity and context effects, and for linguistic variables like valence, dominance and arousal will be evaluated, and the ability to understand conceptual combinations will be modeled.  In the third part, word associations of psychiatric populations will be compared with those of normal control participants, and a specific type of word associations, as generated in a category fluency test, will be modeled and tested for its diagnostic value and informativeness with respect to cognitive functioning of target patient groups.