The study looked at how people associate words with each other. They compared two methods: one where people said the first word that came to mind, and another where they kept saying related words. The researchers found that the order in which words were said was related to how strong the association was. They also found that the two methods produced similar results in terms of which words were most commonly associated. This suggests that the order in which words are said can be a useful way to measure how strongly words are associated with each other.