Ok so, I'm playing a new entry in one of my favorite VN series, Ace Attorney, and that tempted me to write an old fic again. A brief rundown of how ace attorney works, you play as a defense lawyer and you have to solve the who dun it puzzle while making, at times...obtuse leaps in logic. While the title character, Phoenix Wright, has no 'special' powers to use, unless bluffing counts. His two secondary teammates do have special powers. Apollo Justice can read body language to 'detect' if people are lying/hiding something. A good example would be a witness might scratch their nose during a bit of their testimony. it's up to the player to figure out what that habit means. Athena Cykes is also a lie detector but she uses psychology and superhuman hearing to hear the change in people's heart rates/vocal tones to tell if they're lying (even if unintentionally) I was thinking my guy could use word association as a sort of non-superpower. But I'm unsure of how to use it without making it abundantly obvious. Something like the witness wanting to hide something behind a door for example, might repeat the word door or hide/hidden too many times subconsciously. I'm not entirely sure if that's how word association works though, somehow I feel like it's a tad more complicated lol so what's the deal? Is my understanding at least halfway correct?
Word association is actually a psychological diagnosis tool. The psychiatrist says a word and the patient immediately blurts out the 1st thing that comes to mind. Example: Mother—Whore! Father—Kill!! Love—Goat! Children—Yummy! I don't know what it would be called, but a person often does reveal any powerful obsessions or whatever is really on their mind through word usage and other little clues. Actually one of the big tells in the word association test is how long it takes for them to answer AFTER certain words. For instance, if the patient is really hung up on the word uncle (maybe he just killed his uncle?) then he might be fine when the shrink says uncle but for the next 2 or 3 words he might hesitate a little extra because now he's all roiled up inside for a while. Most people don't know that's the main thing they're looking for in the word association test though (one of anyway). That kind of thing could be used just listening to testimony or something. Yeah, especially if the lawyer can lead the questions the way he wants to. In fact, yeah, I suppose a lawyer could use word association by directly asking certain questions and closely watching the reactions. That's not what it usually means, but it could be used that way.
Yeah, Ace attorney isn't exactly something to be taken literally, I mean the canon state that the series mostly takes placed in is called Japanifornia, yes I'm not joking, what started as a fan-made meme about the weird Japanese stuff seen in (supposedly) California actually got canonized as that. A real lawyer might not be able to lead questions however they want, but in Ace Attorney, when posing questions to the witness it always works out, so long as you presented the correct evidence to back up your statement. It's quite a fun series if you like logic puzzles. So, would it be more accurate to the real thing to have the leading question contain the word 'secret' and have the witness randomly blurt out door, implying that there's some secret they desperately want to hide behind said door? For example, say they hid the ingredients to a powerful toxin in the kitchen pantry, my Lawyer might use a trigger word like secret or pantry, and cause some form of reaction since obviously they don't want to get caught.
What you're referring to is word association (correct term: clang association in Mental Health). Here are two (2) links (below) which explains this further in detail: https://www.healthline.com/health/clang-association https://www.verywellmind.com/clang-associations-380072
