Examined completion responses for 40 3-letter word stems (e.g., ABO) produced by 100 undergraduates. Data include a list of the different words that were written as stem completions, their frequency of occurrence as completions, and their frequency of occurrence in English according to published norms. Analyses revealed 3 primary factors that determined overall performance on a stem-completion test: word frequency, word length, and meanings per word. Usually, however, only 1 of these factors made a significant contribution to performance. It is suggested that results can be used as a database for selecting target words for the construction of completion tests. The entire list of completion responses is appended.
Subjects were instructed to complete the word fragments with the first words that come to mind.