In the early nineteen-sixties, two psychologists, David Palermo and James Jenkins, began amassing a huge table of word associations, the first thoughts that come to mind when people are asked to reflect on a particular word. (They interviewed more than forty-five hundred subjects.) Palermo and Jenkins soon discovered that the vast majority of these associations were utterly predictable. For instance, when people are asked to free-associate about the word %u201Cblue,%u201D the most likely first answer is %u201Cgreen,%u201D followed by %u201Csky%u201D and %u201Cocean.%u201D When asked to free-associate about %u201Cgreen,%u201D nearly everyone says %u201Cgrass.%u201D %u201CEven the most creative people are still going to come up with many mundane associations,%u201D Nemeth says.
added 2012-03-27T23:10:11Z by anders