A Linguistic Study on Word Association Behavior of Turkish Speaking Children in Urban and Rural Settings: A Socio-Cognitive Perspective

Abstract

Word association is one of the major techniques used in linguistics, neuropsychology and psycholinguistics. In this study, the researcher used word association test in an attempt to reveal the influence of the residential area on the children’s language development through a cognitive perspective. In this study a word list composed of 12 stimuli words has been presented to a total number of 345 11-year-old rural and urban children in Ankara and they have been asked to write the first five words coming into their mind. The analysis of the responses to WAT revealed that both groups have an inclination towards generating more paradigmatic and abstract responses and less clang responses. Although clear developmental shifts have been observed in both, it is found out that urban children have undergone developmental shifts earlier than rural children.