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Structural Comparison of Cognitive Associative Networks in Two Populations 1
Author(s) -
Coronges Kathryn A.,
Stacy Alan W.,
Valente Thomas W.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00253.x
Subject(s) - associative property , cognition , cluster analysis , psychology , content addressable memory , path analysis (statistics) , path (computing) , cognitive psychology , graph , semantic network , computer science , artificial intelligence , theoretical computer science , mathematics , artificial neural network , machine learning , pure mathematics , neuroscience , programming language
The cognitive associative structure of 2 populations was studied using network analysis of free‐word associations. Structural differences in the associative networks were compared using measures of network centralization, size, density, clustering, and path length. These measures are closely aligned with cognitive theories describing the organization of knowledge and retrieval of concepts from memory. Size and centralization of semantic structures were larger for college students than for 7 th graders, while density, clustering, and mean path length were similar. Findings presented reveal that subpopulations might have very different cognitive associative networks. This study suggests that graph theory and network analysis methods are useful in mapping differences in associative structures across groups.