The current study aimed at examining the utility of a word association test in revealing students' cognitive structure in a specific chemistry topic through a word association test. The participants were 153 6th graders in a western Turkish city. The results revealed that the word association test serves a useful purpose in exploring the students' cognitive structure with regard to physical and chemical change and identifying their misconceptions about this topic. Some students gave irrelevant responses to stimulus words and seemed to have difficulty with distinguishing between physical and chemical changes. Implications for teacher education were discussed.