The technique of word association on concept representation takes the
concepts (words) as units of analysis to extract the cognitive representation of related
concept on the target concept, by clustering those associated words which represent
the related concept, the cognitive structure of the target concept can be obtained. This
technique, easy to operate, conveniently carried out in a large quantity, mustering
the advantages of both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, is an effective
method to explore the cognitive structure of the target concept. The technique of word
association has been applied for a long time, but on concept representation research
which explores the cognitive structure of a specific target concept, still there was no
literature to expound it systematically. First in this paper deficiencies needed to be
revised among the existing literature on the application of word association on concept
representation were summarized, then theoretical foundation and application steps of
this technique were expounded in order to facilitate the use of later researchers. Also
shortcomings of this technique were elaborated in this paper.