Two Measures of Free Association Response and Their Relations to Scores on Selected Personality and Verbal Ability Tests

Abstract

The first 50 stimuli from the K-R list, two personality tests (the MCI and the GZTS), and 26 verbal ability paper-and-pencil tests were given to a large number of senior high school students. Two response categories for the K-R, opposites and non-opposite primaries, and the personality tests had low correlations, most of which did not differ significantly from zero. This finding is consistent with that of previous investigators. The correlations between the K-R response classes and the 26 verbal tests, however, yielded different results. The non-opposite primaries tended to exhibit low positive (significant) correlations with the verbal tests, whereas the opposite scores showed essentially zero correlations with these same tests. These findings were interpreted as further supporting the contention that commonality scores do not represent a unitary verbal habit.