words and science - 12/08/11 09:33 AM
Dear all,
Word associations have been very important in the study of word meanings in cognitive science. Currently, different professors are trying to build a network of word associations in English. In order to do this, we need many native (or at least very fluent) English speakers to participate in a small fun tast that does not take more than five minutes. In the task, we present a short list of words and ask people to write down the first three words they think of after reading the cue word. In order to build the network, we need about 100 participants responding to every cue word for thousands of cue words. That implies that we need thousands of participants. It seems a lot, but we've done this before: we succeeded over the past few years of reaching about 80.000 perticipants in Flanders and in the Netherlands to do the task in Dutch. However, since English is THE scientific language worldwide, it would be much more interesting to build a similar network in English. So it would be great if teachers encourage their pupils (from age 16 onwards) or their students to spend five minutes of their time by visiting
http://www.smallworldofwords.com
As the dataset will be open for all interested scientists, you will help many of us by participating. It would even be better if participants spread this call by e-mail, facebook, or other means. If you have suggestions about other ways in which we can reach people willing to participate in this small task, please don't hesitate to contact us. My coordinates are given below.
With kind regards,
Professor Dr. Gert Storms
Department of Psychology
University of Leuven
Tiensestraat 102
3000 Leuven
Belgium
E-mail: gert.storms@psy.kuleuven.be
Word associations have been very important in the study of word meanings in cognitive science. Currently, different professors are trying to build a network of word associations in English. In order to do this, we need many native (or at least very fluent) English speakers to participate in a small fun tast that does not take more than five minutes. In the task, we present a short list of words and ask people to write down the first three words they think of after reading the cue word. In order to build the network, we need about 100 participants responding to every cue word for thousands of cue words. That implies that we need thousands of participants. It seems a lot, but we've done this before: we succeeded over the past few years of reaching about 80.000 perticipants in Flanders and in the Netherlands to do the task in Dutch. However, since English is THE scientific language worldwide, it would be much more interesting to build a similar network in English. So it would be great if teachers encourage their pupils (from age 16 onwards) or their students to spend five minutes of their time by visiting
http://www.smallworldofwords.com
As the dataset will be open for all interested scientists, you will help many of us by participating. It would even be better if participants spread this call by e-mail, facebook, or other means. If you have suggestions about other ways in which we can reach people willing to participate in this small task, please don't hesitate to contact us. My coordinates are given below.
With kind regards,
Professor Dr. Gert Storms
Department of Psychology
University of Leuven
Tiensestraat 102
3000 Leuven
Belgium
E-mail: gert.storms@psy.kuleuven.be