The present study aimed to probe into the effect of individual’s knowledge base on detecting associations. Participants were 40 rich-knowledgeable and 46 less-knowledgeable people in biology domain. Experimental materials were 120 paired words, which were grouped into four based on two dimensions, biologic domain/general domain, and remote/close. There were 30 paired words in each group respectively. All words were nouns composed of two Chinese characters. Participants were asked to decide whether a paired words presented to them were associated in any ways. Repeated-Measures MANOVA revealed there was significant interaction between knowledge base and domain of paired words in percentage of acceptation. People with rich knowledge in biology domain had stronger inclinations to accept the associations of biologic paired words, and exhibited no difference in judging general paired words compared with less knowledgeable people. Analysis for RT testified that rich-knowledgeable people spent more time in judging the association of biologic remote paired words than less-knowledgeable people. Yet no differences were disclosed in processing the general domain samples. The explanation for such findings could be sought in the specificity of domain knowledge and in the spreading activation theory of semantic memory. The findings implied that knowledge base affected people’s abilities to detect remote associations in certain categories or domains, and such ability could be domain specific instead of being regarded as creator’s rigid traits. （注：这里是短摘要，长摘要见论文）