Centroid Analysis

Centroid Analysis is technique to estimate concept representations in groups and individuals from their open-form responses to a given concept. This is done by collecting such open responses (for example, in a free association task), mapping them onto a pre-existing representational space (for example, a word embedding space), and calculating the centroid of the responses. 

More information and a large-scale evaluation study on the technique can be found here:

Petrenco, A., & Günther, F. (2025). Centroid analysis: Inferring concept representations from open-ended word responses. psyArXiv preprint, https://psyarxiv.com/2xbuh  

Centroid analyses can be performed using the centroid_analysis() function (click here for documentation) of the LSAfun package.