Whats next?

Experiment: Made a poster that invites different people to put a word next to the last word written by another person, each word is the result (one's own interpretation or association) of the previous one, a link between two words is formed. A chain of links is then formed by the collective association of two (different) words. Same experiment was carried out at the same time using drawing instead.

Potential problem: The previous words on the chain are visible. This might cause an effect on the result; people may tend to write something new / try to be creative / try to avoid going backwards or repeating. One of the many reasons of such effect is people tend to see the link as a vector, which might be misled by the > symbols between each blank, they were made for indicating the order of the blanks. A control experiment is needed—only the last word is made visible.

Findings: The writing and drawing versions have different beginnings, an apple and a picture of a snake respectively. I intentionally used these two biblical subject as the beginnings. Interestingly the first and second participants tend to have made this same association as they are asked to write and draw in the two posters accordingly. Their link on each poster is probably a sub-link evolved from the primary link they made when seeing the two posters—apple and snake.

To further analyze results, I proposed a naming system for this experiment:

Units(words) in order on the written poster: A, B, C, D, E... 

Units(images) in order on the drawing poster: a, b, c, d, e...

Participants in order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

So 'apple' is A, 'snake' is a. And the fourth participant(4) who wrote the fifth word(E) formed the link DE4 between D and E.

In the case of 1: 

Assume a link between A and a was formed before any other links appear, 1 formed Aa1. After the formation of Aa1(cross-poster), second link AB1(within word poster) is formed, then the third link ab1(within image poster).

In one of the situations, the process of forming AB1 is influenced by Aa1 because the existence of Aa1 gave a new interpretation of the meanings of A and a. Theoretically AB1 is a sub-link or byproduct evolved from Aa1. To represent such situation, AB1 is re-named as AB1(Aa1). That explains the formation of AB1 under the circumstances of being influenced by Aa1, the first link. The influential subject is labeled in brackets(). According to the same situation, ab1(AB1(Aa1)) is formed instead of ab1.

AB1 can refer to the position of that specific link on the poster.

AB1(Aa1) can refer to the nature of the link AB1.

However, there are other situations. e.g. AB1 can still be written as AB1 to describe its nature when the formation of AB1 is free from the influence of Aa1 or other subjects. There might be EF5(AB1)(CD3), where the link EF5 is formed under the influence of two of the previous links.

How many links are there between A and C? Is it like A–B–C? or A–B–X–Y–C?

A link is the result and also the cause of a subject–subject relation. This is an investigation about link–link relation, It is about the link between links.