The purpose of this study is to present the connections between the concepts in perception and cognitive structures of secondary school 8th grade students for principles of Ataturk. Word association test is used in data collection. The number of the total participants in this research is 190. A frequency table is formed for the data obtained in the research, then obtained frequency data has been analyzed by using inspiration 8.00 program. According to the results of the research; it has been observed that the most repeated words are irreligion, fascism, racism, festival, contemporaneousness, Islam and religion. The data obtained in the result part of the research has been compared with other studies. As the result, it has been determined that the word association test is an measurement tool which is appropriate for learning how the students attribute mean to the concepts.