Word Association Test (WAT)¶
Product or Programme · All products and programmes
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 1 study (1 associational),q2· 1 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study
Description¶
A timed psycholinguistic assessment instrument that elicits and analyzes learners' spontaneous word associations to diagnose the organization and integration of concepts in a knowledge domain.
Components¶
- Word Association Test as a cognitive-structure diagnostic instrument for needs-assessment-driven curriculum design: The Word Association Test (WAT) is a psycholinguistic instrument grounded in spreading-activation and associationist models of semantic memory, used here to map the organisational structure of students' AI cognition. The article explains that the test "measures cognitive structure not as the presence or absence of individual concepts but as the pattern of associative connections among them". Early, frequent responses indicate highly integrated concepts; late or rare responses indicate peripheral or fragmented understanding. The study operationalises this through a seven-stage protocol — normalisation to 65 canonical codes, frequency and Z-score banding, Kendall's τ with FDR correction, PROXSCAL multidimensional scaling, and hierarchical threshold network analysis — and links the resulting map directly to micro-credential design decisions. (İsmail Şan et al. (2026))
Claims¶
- Turkish undergraduates' AI associations are anchored by utilitarian concepts, with Convenience and Speed alone accounting for 18.5% of all responses [+M]
- AI governance vocabulary (bias, transparency, privacy, accountability, regulation, fairness) is a structural zero in students' AI associative networks [+M]
- Positive and negative AI perceptions are strongly negatively co-related within individuals (τ = −0.819), refuting an ambivalent-attitude reading of aggregate frequencies [+M]
Related Products and Programmes¶
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Key Sources¶
- İsmail Şan and Hanife Gülhan Orhan Karsak. (2026). Knowing its name, not its nature: word association mapping of student AI cognition and evidence-based micro-credential design in Turkish higher education. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-026-00621-w
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
product |
id |
word-association-test-wat |
title |
Word Association Test (WAT) |
description |
A timed psycholinguistic assessment instrument that elicits and analyzes learners' spontaneous word associations to diagnose the organization and integration of concepts in a knowledge domain. |
status |
review |
product_kind |
assessment |
generated |
by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-11 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
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