DOI: 10.5061/dryad.vdncjsz1f
title: Measuring semantic memory using associative and dissociative retrieval tasks

description: Recent theoretical advances highlighted the need for novel means of
 assessing semantic cognition. Here, we introduce the
 Associative-Dissociative Retrieval Task (ADT), positing a novel way to
 test inhibitory control over semantic memory retrieval by contrasting the
 efficacy of associative (automatic) and dissociative (controlled)
 retrieval on standard set of verbal stimuli. All ADT measures achieved
 excellent reliability, homogeneity, and short-term temporal stability.
 Moreover, in-depth stimulus level analyses showed that associating is
 easier for words evoking few but strong associates, yet such propensity
 hampers the inhibition. Finally, we provided critical support for the
 construct validity of the ADT measures, demonstrating reliable
 correlations with domain-specific measures of semantic memory functioning
 (semantic fluency and associative combination) but negligible correlations
 with domain-general capacities (processing speed and working memory).
 Together, we show that ADT provides simple yet potent and psychometrically
 sound measures of semantic memory retrieval and offers noteworthy
 advantages over the currently available assessment methods.
description: All datasets were collected via behavioural testing in a
 laboratory using a computer. Data referenced in electronic supplementary
 material were collected via online forms. Data processing is described in
 the manuscript and supplementary material, and detailed in the supplied R
 scripts. Details for each dataset and script are provided in the README
 file.
description: Supplied data are saved in .csv and .txt format. All data can be
 accessed via freely available software, including R (for scripts to
 process and analyze the data) or JASP. In case of downloading the
 individual data files, we recommend placing them on a C: disk, otherwise
 adjust the corresponding lines (with paths to files) in respective
 sections of the R script.  Individual behavioural tasks used in the
 current study can also be inspected in a free stand-alone version of
 PsychoPy software (note that running the tasks used in the current study
 on PsychoPy versions newer than v3.2.4 may result in errors. Therefore, we
 recommend running them specifically on version 3.2.4).
description: # Measuring semantic memory using associative and dissociative retrieval
 tasks We provide two sets
 of data files: 1) Raw data files containing unprocessed data of individual
 participants on given cognitive tasks; 2) Processed data files directly
 prepared for statistical analyses conducted in the study. Likewise, we
 provide all codes used to process and analyze the data. The data come from
 behavioural testing conducted on a computer during individual testing
 sessions in the laboratory. ## Description of the data and file structure
 All raw data files (except the .zip file "ADT_StimWords") are
 structured as long-formatted data frames where columns represent
 individual variables and rows individual responses of each participant.
 Processed data files are mostly structured in wide data format. ##### Raw
 data files: ###### *ADT.raw\.txt* * NOTE: This file is available only at
 the alternative repository at the Open Science Framework; url:
 * Contains unprocessed retrieval latency and
 error data on Associative-dissociative retrieval task. The data includes
 both training and testing trials. The variables of interest are coded in
 the following columns: * The "Condition" column designates the
 rule (Associate or Dissociate) directing the participant's response.
 * The "Trial" column codes the stimulus word in the Slovak
 language (note that you can match the Slovak word with the English word by
 referring to the Appendix in the article). * The "Response"
 column codes the response to the stimulus word provided by each
 participant using the keyboard. * The "Latecny" column codes the
 response time to a stimulus (in seconds), i.e., time measured from the
 onset of the stimulus word to the first keypress of the provided response.
 * The "Error" column marks the responses judged as incorrect by
 two independent raters. This column contains three values: "1"
 marks the response not following the response rule or general rule (i.e.,
 providing unrelated or related responses on associate and dissociate
 trials, respectively, or responding with a proper noun). "2"
 marks the unidentifiable responses due to typing errors. "3"
 strategy errors designated the exploitation of deliberative strategy in
 responding (e.g., using the same initial letter or semantic category for
 cueing three or more successive responses) * The "Form" column
 designates the parallel form to which the trial belonged (A, B, or C). *
 The "participant" column codes the participants' ID numbers
 *ACT.raw.txt* * NOTE: This file is available only at the alternative
 repository at the Open Science Framework; url:
 * Contains unprocessed retrieval latency and
 error data on Associative combination task. The data includes both
 training and testing trials. The variables of interest are coded in the
 following columns: * The "Stim_A" and "Stim_B" columns
 code the presented stimulus word pair in the Slovak language * The
 "Response" column codes the response to the stimulus word pair
 provided by each participant using the keyboard. * The "Latecny"
 column codes the response time to a stimulus (in seconds), i.e., time
 measured from the onset of the stimulus word to the first keypress of the
 provided response. * The "Error" column indicating a response
 judged as erroneous (i.e., not related to both stimulus words) by two
 independent raters. * The "Form" column designates the parallel
 form to which the trial belonged (A, B, or C). * The
 "participant" column codes the participants' ID numbers.
 *VFT.raw.txt* * NOTE: This file is available only at the alternative
 repository at the Open Science Framework; url:
 * Contains unprocessed retrieval latency and
 error data on Semantic verbal fluency task. The data includes both
 training and testing trials. The variables of interest are coded in the
 following columns: * The "Probe_1" column codes the semantic
 category for which the participant was instructed to name as many
 exemplars as possible in 90 seconds. The categories were
 "Animals" ("Zvieratá" in the Slovak language),
 "Occupations ("Zamestnanie"), and "Tools"
 ("Náradie"). The category "Clothing"
 ("Oblečenie") was used as a practice trial. * The
 "Response" column codes individuals entries provided by each
 participant to each category using the keyboard. * The "Latecny"
 column codes the inter-response time, i.e., the elapsed time (in seconds)
 from the confirmation of the previous response to the first keypress of
 the next response (note: latency of the first response was measured from
 the onset of the category cue word). * The "Error_2" column
 indicating a response judged as erroneous (1 or 0; i.e., repetition or
 out-of-category word). * The "Form" column designates the
 parallel form to which the trial belonged (A, B, or C). * The
 "participant" column codes the participants' ID numbers.
 *PS_A.csv* * Contains unprocessed reaction time and error data on Digit
 symbol substitution task. The data includes both training and testing
 trials. The variables of interest are coded in the following columns: *
 The "Block" column designates whether a trial was part of
 Practice or Test block. * The "key_resp.rt" column codes the
 reaction time (in seconds) measured from the onset of the stimulus (i.e.,
 symbol) to the press of the response button (i.e., number on a keyboard).
 * The "key_resp.corr" columns codes whether the participant
 responded correctly (1) or incorrectly (0) on a trial. * The
 "Form" column designates the parallel form to which the task
 belonged (A, B, or C). * The "participant" column codes the
 participants' ID numbers. *PS_B.csv* * Contains unprocessed reaction
 time and error data on Letter matching task. The data includes both
 training and testing trials. The variables of interest are coded in the
 following columns: * The "Block" column designates whether a
 trial was part of Practice or Test block. * The "Targets" column
 represents target letters displayed during the trial for which the
 participant had to identify whether at least one of them appears in the
 letter string coded in the "String" column * The
 "Includes" column codes whether at least one of the letters in
 the "Targets" column was also displayed within the letter string
 in the "String" column (1) or not (0) * The
 "Response_txt.rt" column codes the reaction time (in seconds)
 measured from the onset of the stimulus (i.e., letter string and target
 letters) to the press of the response button (at least one or none of the
 target letters matches the letter in the string). * The
 "Response_txt.corr" columns codes whether the participant
 responded correctly (1) or incorrectly (0) on a trial. * The
 "Form" column designates the parallel form to which the task
 belonged (A, B, or C). * The "participant" column codes the
 participants' ID numbers. ###### *PS\_C.csv* * Contains unprocessed
 reaction time and error data on Choice reponse time task. The data
 includes both training and testing trials. The variables of interest are
 coded in the following columns: * The "Color" column codes the
 color in which the arrow stimulus was displayed. * The
 "Response_txt.rt" column codes the reaction time (in seconds)
 measured from the onset of the stimulus (i.e., white or red arrow pointing
 up, down, left, or right) to the press of the response button. * The
 "Response_txt.corr" columns codes whether the participant
 responded correctly (1 - pressing an arrow key with a corresponding
 direction for white arrows and with an opposing direction for red arrows)
 or incorrectly (0) on a trial. * The "Form" column designates
 the parallel form to which the task belonged (A, B, or C). * The
 "participant" column codes the participants' ID numbers.
 ###### *ADT\_StimWords.zip* * NOTE: The .zip file is available only at the
 alternative repository at the Open Science Framework; url:
 * This zip file contains individual text
 files for each ADT stimulus word. These text files contain four word
 associations provided by each participant to a given stimulus word.
 Participants provided these associations via an online form after
 attending the testing session in the laboratory. * Each text file contains
 "ID" and "text". These text files are processed and
 used in the calculations implemented in the R script "Associative
 typicality and topology calculations.R". ##### Processed data files:
 ###### *ADT.test.txt* * NOTE: This file is available only at the
 alternative repository at the Open Science Framework; url:
 * Contains processed response latency data
 for each condition and task form in long format (i.e., each response for
 each participants is listed). The latency data were processed by removing
 erroneous entries, outlier latency data points (3 standard deviations
 above or below the mean retrieval latency) and winsorizing (10% two-sided
 trimming) the remaining latency data. Such processed latency data are
 coded in the "wRT" column. *ADT.agg.txt* * Contains aggregated
 (averaged) response latency data (in seconds) for each participant across
 all trials in wide format. The columns represent averaged response
 latencies for associate ("a"), dissociate ("d"), and
 inhibition cost("ic") measures across three (1, 2, 3) parallel
 forms. Note that inhibition cost is the difference between the dissociate
 and associate response latencies. *ADT.IC.txt* * NOTE: This file is
 available only at the alternative repository at the Open Science
 Framework; url: * Contains processed (10%
 two-sided winsorization) inhibition cost data (column "wIC" in
 seconds) by participant, stimulus, and form. ######
 *ADT.item(psycholing).txt* * NOTE: This file is available only at the
 alternative repository at the Open Science Framework; url:
 * Contains psycholinguistics data for each
 ADT stimulus word. The columns code the stimulus word in the Slovak
 language (Item_SK), word length ("Length" expressed in number of
 letters), word frequency ("Frequency" expressed as logarithm of
 word frequency in the Slovak National Corpus database), word polysemy
 ("Polysemy" expressed as number of distinct meanings of a word
 found in the lexicon). Columns "Con", "Ima",
 "Conx", "Val", "Aro" refer to word
 Concreteness, Imageability, Contextual availability, Emotional valence,
 and Arousal, respectively. The values on these variables are averaged
 ratings collected from independent group of participants (i.e., not
 participating in the study). * Concreteness (1 = Abstract ; 7 = Concrete)
 * Imaginability (1 = Difficult to imagine ; 7 = Easy to imagine) *
 Contextual availability (1 = Low availability of context ; 7 = High
 availability of context) * Emotional valence (1 = negative ; 7 = positive)
 * Arousal (1 = calm ; 7 = arousing) * Finally, the columns
 "Vividness" and "Affective_tone" represent composite
 z-scores acquired from running principal component analysis on
 psycholinguistics data. Higher vividness score indicates a word which was
 rated as more concrete, easily imaginable, and contextually available,
 whereas higher higher affective_tone score indicates word evoking positive
 affect and low arousal as opposed to words with lower score evoking
 negative affect and high arousal. *ADT.item(typ&pot).txt* * NOTE: This
 file is available only at the alternative repository at the Open Science
 Framework; url: * Contains data related
 associative properties of each ADT stimulus word together with calculated
 composite scores for Associative typicality and Associative topology. Note
 that typicality and topology scores are expressed in standardized z-scores
 estimated from principal component analysis. *ACT.proc.txt* * Contains
 aggregated/averaged response latencies for each participant across all
 trials within individual task forms (ac1, ac2, ac3). *PS.proc.txt* *
 Contains aggregated data for all participants and processing speed tasks
 (p1 = digit symbol substitution; p2 = letter matching; p3 = Choice
 response time). The aggregated data represent a ratio between average (10%
 winsorized) reaction time and overall accuracy (i.e., percent correct
 responses). *VFT.proc.txt* * Contains the number of correctly named
 category exemplars for each semantic category by individual participants
 (f1 = animals; f2 = occupations; f3 = tools). *WM.proc.txt* * Contains the
 calculated average working memory span for each participant in each
 working memory task (w1 = alpha span task; w2 = operation span task; w3 =
 rotation span task) *Aggregated.data.txt* * Merges all processed datafiles
 (from ADT, ACT, VFT, WM, and PS tasks) into one dataframe ##
 Sharing/Access information Data, codes, and methods are also openly
 available at Open Science Framework repository: *
 ## Code/Software We provide fully anoted R
 scripts used to process and analyze the data. Please read carefully all
 the comments included in the respective R scripts to understand each step
 in the processing and analysis pipeline more clearly. Make sure to start
 the scripts with empty (cleared) global environment. We list all R scripts
 with brief description below: Raw data processing.R * This script was used
 to process the raw data related to all cognitive tasks employed in the
 study. ADT Internal consistency & Reliability.R * This script relates
 to the Part 1 of the study which analyzed internal consistency and
 short-term temporal stability of the Associative-dissociative task
 measures (associative retrieval latency, dissociative retrieval latency,
 and inhibition cost). Associative typicality and topology calculations.R *
 This script was used to process ADT stimulus word association data and to
 calculate Associative typicality and Associative topology variables for
 each ADT stimulus word. Stimulus-level effects.R * This script includes
 linear mixed-effect models and correlations reported in Part 2 of the
 study. ADT correlations with other tasks.R * This script includes
 correlation analyses between ADT measures and other cognitive tasks used
 in the study reported in Part 3 of the study. Note that this script also
 contains principal component analyses conducted on cognitive performance
 data. Finally, we provide all tasks and parallel forms employed in the
 current study together with used materials. The tasks were programmed in
 PsychoPy (version 3.2.4). We recommend to run the tasks on that specific
 version (standalone PsychoPy 3.2.4) as newer versions may result in
 errors.