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Abstract：
This study investigates the phenomena of semantic drift through the lenses of language and situated simulation (LASS) and the word frequency effect (WFE) within a timed word association task. Our primary objectives were to determine whether semantic drift can be identified over the short time (25 seconds) of a free word association task (a predicted corollary of LASS), and whether more frequent terms are generated earlier in the process (as expected due to the WFE). Respondents were provided with five cue words (tree, dog, quality, plastic and love), and asked to write as many associations as they could. We hypothesized that terms generated later in the task (fourth time quartile, the last 19-25 seconds) would be semantically more distant (cosine similarity) from the cue word than those generated earlier (first quartile, the first 1-7 seconds), indicating semantic drift. Additionally, we explored the WFE by hypothesizing that earlier generated words would be more frequent and less diverse. Utilizing a dataset matched with GloVe 300B word embeddings, BERT and WordNet synsets, we analysed semantic distances among 1569 unique term pairs for all cue words across time. Our results supported the presence of semantic drift, with significant evidence of within-participant, semantic drift from the first to fourth time (LASS) and frequency (WFE) quartiles. In terms of the WFE, we observed a notable decrease in the diversity of terms generated earlier in the task, while more unique terms (greater diversity and relative uniqueness) were generated in the 4th time quartile, aligning with our hypothesis that more frequently used words dominate early stages of a word association task. We also found that the size of effects varied substantially across cues, suggesting that some cues might invoke stronger and more idiosyncratic situated simulations. Theoretically, our study contributes to the understanding of LASS and the WFE. It suggests that semantic drift might serve as a scalable indicator of the invocation of language versus simulation systems in LASS and might also be used to explore cognition within word association tasks more generally. The findings also add a temporal and relational dimension to the WFE. Practically, our research highlights the utility of word association tasks in understanding semantic drift and the diffusion of word usage over a sub-minute task, arguably the shortest practically feasible timeframe, offering a scalable method to explore group and individual changes in semantic relationships, whether via the targeted diffusion of influence in a marketing campaign, or seeking to understand differences in cognition more generally. Possible practical uses and opportunities for future research are discussed.
摘要：
本研究通过定时单词关联任务中的语言和位置模拟（LASS）和词频效应（WFE）的镜头调查了语义漂移现象。我们的主要目标是确定是否可以在自由词关联任务（LASS的预测推论）的短时间（25秒）内识别语义漂移，以及是否在过程中更早生成更频繁的术语(如预期的那样，由于WFE)。向受访者提供了五个提示词(树，狗,质量,塑料和爱)，并要求写尽可能多的协会。我们假设在任务后期生成的术语(第四次四分位数，最后19-25秒）在语义上比以前生成的词更远（余弦相似性）（第一个四分位数，前1-7秒)，表示语义漂移。此外,我们通过假设较早生成的单词会更频繁和更少的多样性来探索WFE。利用与GloVe300B单词嵌入匹配的数据集，BERT和WordNet语法集，我们分析了1569个独特术语对中所有提示词的语义距离。我们的结果支持语义漂移的存在，有大量证据表明参与者内部，语义漂移从第一到第四时间(LASS)和频率(WFE)四分位数。就WFE而言,我们观察到任务早期产生的术语多样性显著下降，虽然在第4次四分位数中产生了更多的独特项(更大的多样性和相对独特性)，与我们的假设一致，即更频繁使用的单词在单词关联任务的早期阶段占主导地位。我们还发现，效果的大小在不同的线索之间变化很大，这表明一些线索可能会引发更强、更独特的模拟。理论上,我们的研究有助于理解LASS和WFE。这表明语义漂移可以作为LASS中语言与模拟系统调用的可扩展指标，也可以更广泛地用于探索单词关联任务中的认知。这些发现还为WFE增加了时间和关系维度。实际上，我们的研究强调了单词关联任务在理解语义漂移和子分钟任务中单词用法扩散方面的效用，可以说是最短的实际可行的时间框架，提供了一种可扩展的方法来探索语义关系中的群体和个体变化，无论是通过营销活动中有针对性的影响力扩散，或寻求更广泛地理解认知差异。讨论了可能的实际用途和未来研究的机会。
