ST.

AUGUSTINE SCHOOL OF NURSING

FORMATION OF WORD ASSOSCIATION AND PERCEPTUAL DEFENSE

A.Y. 2018-2019

An Experimental Research Presented to the Faculty

Of St. Augustine School of Nursing

Lucena City Campus

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree Bachelor of Science in Psychology

By:

Christine Eunice P. Piguerra

And

Jinalyn A. Comia

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INTRODUCTION

Word Association is a set of stimulus words that an individual will associate to the

first word, things, name, places, or event that comes to their mind. Such words that they

will response might not have a meaning for them. Basically, some of their respons e

towards the given stimulus words might be connected on their past experiences. Robert

Snyder states that a large part of memory takes place in the unconscious mind.

Word association test invented by Galton (1879) is an attempt to explore the

thought processes by making a record of sequential free associations. An individual’s

response towards the given stimulus words might give a hint about his/her personal

experiences. According to Richards et al. (1985) Word Association is a way in which

words come to be associated with each other and which influence the learning and

remembering of words. Apparently, it might take half a minute for them to recognize

unfamiliar words or those words that they’ve not been using for a long time. As Bahar and

Hansell (2000) states, word association test is one of the commonest and oldest methods

for investigating cognitive structure and has been used by several researchers.

Word association can be affected by several factors, such as age, socioeconomic

status, educational attainment, and cultural background. According to Richards (1991), the

responses to free association tests give much information about the psychological

structuring of vocabulary in an individual and offer a way of investigating the syntactic

and semantic relationships among words. Changes in facial expressions can also be seen

when there are words that triggers some of their positive or negative memories. Kent and

Rosanoff (1910) designed a word association test where the index of commonality or the

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frequency of values of the responses was used to reveal the normal persons from those

suffering from psychosis. Technically speaking, Word association can explore an

individual’s unconscious mind and repressing thought, it can also be used to identify if a

person is suffering from Psychosis and some other mental illnesses.

Language plays a significant role as the most important communication tool in our

daily lives, and it has been evolving continuously since ancient time. The test also requires

a minimum reading capacity and familiarity with words. If not, the response time might

take too long just because the subject isn’t familiar with the words. Wolter’s (2002) study

revealed that word associations in a foreign language are not clearly linked to proficiency..

For Kess (1992), an association theory looks for latent relationships, the covert links that

words have with other words, images and thought. An individual’s repressing thoughts

might be manifested through association test because they don’t really think that the

response words they’ve given might be linked towards their past experiences if will be

interpreted by the experimenter thoroughly.

Similar to Word Association that can trigger some particular memories, music can

also bring someone back to the times where they first heard a particular music.

According to Tiffany Jenkins (2014) music has been a mnemonic device for thousands of

years. David C Rubin a specialist in autobiographical memory and oral traditions states that

The hippocampus and the frontal cortex are two large areas in the brain associated with

memory and they take a great deal of information every minute. Retrieving it isn’t always

easy. It doesn’t simply come when you ask it to. Music helps because it provides a rhythm

and rhyme and sometimes alliteration which helps to unlock that information with cues. It is

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the structure of the song that helps to remember it, as well as the melody and the images the

words provoke. There are times that when an individual hears a particular music, it basically

brings him/her back to the times where he/she heard that music. Some can trigger good

memories as well as bad ones. Just like smelling a particular perfume or smell, it can also

triggers some memories, an experiences or makes

Perceptual defense refers to the fact that the perception of some stimuli requires

longer reaction time. Factors contributing to this may be the type of stimulus, the state of

one’s personality, and the emotional sensitiveness of the subjects. Carl Jung theorized that

there are two factors that affect a person’s reaction time. First is Preservation which is a

persistent repetition of a word phrase or movement and the other one is the Sensitization

which is basically the progressive amplification of a response follows repeated

administration of stimulus. This refers to the intensification of sensitiveness when a critical

stimulus word is presented. A manifestation of complex indicators could occur such as,

Longer than average reaction time to stimulus word, Repeating the stimulus word as a

response, Failure to respond, Expressive bodily reactions, like laughing, increased

breathing rate, etc., Stammering or uttering meaningless words, Misunderstanding the

stimulus as some other words, and Blushing and manifesting of shyness. The subject

might perceive that they might be criticize in a false way if they say the words that first

come to their mind and that word or things, or name is inappropriate or might make their

image or personality ruined. It hypothesize that the individual tends not to perceive that

which might threaten the ego (sense of self-esteem). Taboo words or dirty words may take

a longer time to recognize than neutral words. It is highly probable that the process of

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information can cause anxiety, discomfort, or embarrassment. It has been claimed that we

can protect ourselves from perceiving stimuli that are hurtful or offensive. Especially those

words that makes the subject’s remember his/her bad experiences.

Perceptual Defense’s idea proposes that there are times when a person actually does

not perceive specific sensory input, such as a swear word or a vulgar image, presumably

because she/he has a filtering mechanism or “perceptual wall” preventing the sensory data

from being processed. Basically, they might do this for a reason that they don’t want to

remember such bad experiences once they hear or sees the stimulus word given.

Conceptual Framework

INPUT PROCESS OUTPUT

 Interviewing
method.
 Presenting a
Stimulus
words written
 Ninety eight in a flashcards
words written to measure
in a Flash signs of
cards. (Filipino emotional
Language) complexes.
 Pencil/Ballpen  Recording the
 Stopwatch response time
until the words
REFERENCES
has been
recognized.

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Assist. Prof. Dr. (October, 2005) PLAYING WITH WORDS: A STUDY ON WORD

ASSOCIATION RESPONSES. Anadolu University, School of Foreign

Languages. Retrieved from:

http://www.sosyalarastirmalar.com/cilt3/sayi10pdf/istifci_ilknur.pdf

Merriam-Webster, (1828) WORD ASSOCIATION TEST. Retrieved from:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/word-association%20test

Thomson Gale, (2005) WORD ASSOCIATION. Retrieved from:

https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/psychology/psychology-and-

psychiatry/word-association-test

Hsiangchu Lai a, Wan-Jung Lin a, Gregory E. Kersten, (2010) THE IMPORTANCE OF

LANGUAGE FAMILIARITY IN GLOBAL BUSINESS E-NEGOTIATION.

Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University.

Retrieved from: http://blog.ub.ac.id/nikeastria/files/2012/04/The-importance-of-

language-familiarity-in-global-business-e-negotiation.pdf

Tiffany Jenkins (October 2014) WHY DOES MUSIC EVOKE MEMORIES.

Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140417-why-does-music-
evoke-memories

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