What is this thing called frequency?

When researchers are interested in the influence of long-term knowledge on performance, printed word frequency is typically the variable of choice. De spite this preference, we know little about what frequency norms measure. T hey ostensibly index how often and how recently words are experienced, but words appear in context, so frequency potentially reflects an influence of connections with other words. This paper presents the results of a large fr ee association study as well as the results of experiments designed to eval uate the hypothesis that common words have stronger connections to other wo rds. The norms indicate that common words tend to be more concrete but they do not appear to have more associates, stronger associates, or more connec tions among their associates. Two extralist cued recall experiments showed that, with other attributes being equal, high- and low-frequency words were equally effective as test cues. These results suggest that frequency does not achieve its effects because of stronger or greater numbers of connectio ns to other words, as implied in SAM. Other results indicated that common w ords have more connections from other words, including their associates, an d that free association provides a valid index of associative strength.