English to Persian (Farsi) Social Sciences Computers (general)

Hello,
How would you translate 'the associations we have with mental categories' in the following text?
=>This is part of an article on computers predicting people's thoughts as well as drawing/illustrating what people think of.
The technique doesn't recognize thoughts but rather responds to the associations we have with mental categories. Thus, while we are not able to find out the identity of a specific 'old person', a participant was thinking of, we may gain an understanding of what they associate with old age.