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Brewer, D. D. (1995). Cognitive indicators of knowledge in semantic domains. Journal of Quantitative Anthropology, 5, 107-128.

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This paper describes a further validation of the cultural consensus model (Romney, Weller, and Batchelder 1986).  Informants first rated their knowledge in one of five semantic domains (birds, countries, diseases, fabrics, and flowers) and then free listed words from that domain.  Informants next (in most cases) reported which of a set of items from a domain they could recognize and finally performed one or two structured tasks (matching or triads test and ranking) in the domain.  Overall, informants who agreed more with others in a structured task (i.e., displayed greater cultural competence) free listed more words, rated themselves as more knowledgeable, and reported being able to recognize more items than informants who agreed less with others.  In addition, consensus estimated answer keys for structured tasks corresponded closely with objective external standards when they were available.  The results suggest that free listing capacity, in particular, might be useful as a rapid and preliminary measure of informants' knowledge levels in specific semantic domains.

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