the strength of an association between two items (e.g., a stimulus and response or between two items in memory). Associative strength is generally measured in terms of capability of the stimulus to elicit a response (e.g., a conditioned or operant response). In word association, this refers to the capacity of the first item to produce recall of the second.
ASSOCIATIVE STRENGTH: “A word that immediately elicited a second word by association, would be said to have a great deal of associative strength. “