Associative Field as a Model of Mental Representation: Cognitive, Emotive and Linguistic Aspects

Purpose of research. Modeling of the associative field in order to reflect the nature of the predication of speech action, represented by the cue – target pair, as well as to identify the dominant mental supports.

Methods. The construction of the associative field is based on the data of free association tests presented in the Russian associative thesaurus and the University of South Florida Free Association Norms. Modeling of the associative field involves the distribution of associates by the nature of predication to identify conceptual reactions, associates-representations, emotional and evaluative, and operational reactions. The established correlation of the types of associates makes it possible to identify the dominance of cognitive, emotive or linguistic guidelines in the production of speech action.

Results. Due to psycholinguistic modeling of the associative fields uchitel and teacher ethnocultural difference in the nature of the predication of speech actions was established. Reactions-representations dominate among American respondents, operational associates prevail among Russian ones. Russian speakers rely more on language norms, while Americans rely on cognitive guidelines. Emotive guidelines take an intermediate place between cognitive and linguistic ones. Associative field uchitel has 12% more emotional and evaluative reactions in comparison with the field teacher. The close distance of the psychological meaning of the words teacher and student is stipulated by the overlapping associations, such as school, professor, class and book. The associative fields uchitel and student do not have overlapping associates, which emphasizes the lack of common psychological meaning.

Conclusion. The conducted research made it possible to demonstrate the effectiveness and prospects of the psycholinguistic model of mental representation. It has been determined that the proposed model reveals the nature of predication in the cue – target relationship, as well as the prevailing guidelines of the internal lexicon and signs on the basis of which psychological predication is carried out.

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