The paper investigates how study participants handle the so-called “hierarchical mapping technique”, an affective name generator developed by Antonucci (1986), which is accompanied by a diagram enabling respondents to compare alters with regard to different degrees of closeness. By applying the thinking-aloud method, we identified three patterns in the order of recalling alters: closeness as overarching schema (with either role relationships or relationship properties as subordinate schema), roles and foci as overarching schema, and a fraying schema. In addition, we investigated how study participants understand and interpret “closeness”. The meanings of closeness can refer to various relationship properties, cultural framing, and relationship dynamics. Results show that specific meanings of closeness are related to different recall patterns. Furthermore, recall patterns vary according to the socio-economic status of the participants. Finally, implications for the construction of name generators and data collection are discussed.

本文调查了研究参与者如何处理所谓的“层次映射技术”，这是由Antonucci（1986）开发的一种情感名称生成器，它附带有一个图表，使受访者可以比较不同亲密程度的变化。通过应用思维方法，我们按照调出变更的顺序确定了三种模式：亲密关系作为总体架构（角色关系或关系属性作为从属架构），角色和焦点作为总体架构以及磨损的架构。此外，我们调查了研究参与者如何理解和解释“亲密关系”。亲密关系的含义可以指代各种关系属性，文化框架和关系动态。结果表明，亲密关系的特定含义与不同的回忆模式有关。此外，回忆模式根据参与者的社会经济状况而有所不同。最后，讨论了对名称​​生成器和数据收集的构造的含义。