An associative activation map (sometimes called a “spreading activation” map, Collins and Luftus 1975) is a mapping for a single thinker of all the associative connections between  concepts.[18] There are many ways of operationalizing associative connections. In the abstract, a psychologist will attempt to probe which concepts (or other mental elements) activate which other concepts (or elements). Imagine a subject who is asked to say whether a string of letters constitutes a word or not, which is the typical goal given to subjects in a “lexical decision task”. If a subject has just seen the word “mouse”, we assume that the concept  mouse was activated. If the subject is then quicker to say that, e.g., “cursor” is a word than the subject is to say that “toaster” is, then we can infer that  cursor was primed, and is thus associatively related to   mouse, in this thinker. Likewise, if we find that “rodent” is also responded to quicker, then we know that  rodent is associatively related to mouse. Using this procedure, one can generate an associative mapping of a thinker’s mind. Such a mapping would constitute a mapping of the associative structures one harbors. However, to be a true activation map—a true mapping of what concepts facilitate what—the mapping would also need to include information about the violations of symmetry between concepts.