Remote Associates Test

The following table presents items, solutions, and difficulty levels for 68 RAT items. Some items were taken from Form 1 of the original RAT, devised by Mednick & Mednick (1962, 1967) for their studies of creativity. Additional items were taken or modified from a set prepared by the late Kenneth S. Bowers and his colleagues (1990) for use in their studies of intuition.

Solution norms were collected by Victor Shamas (nee Shames) for his doctoral dissertation on "implicit problem solving", completed in 1994. The items were presented in Appendix A, and norms (from Experiment 5) in Table 6, of the dissertation. Shamas’ dissertation is as-yet unpublished (though it is available through University Microfilms and www.contentville.com, and also via this link, but the essential results of his research are summarized in two papers by Kihlstrom, Dorfman, and Shames on intuition and "implicit thought", published in 1996. References are given below.

"RAT"-like items are often used on Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, and may be extracted from commercially available versions of the game. Something very much like the RAT also forms the basis of the board game Taboo.

In the table which follows, RAT items are listed in ascending order of difficulty, with the easier items at the top and harder items at the bottom.

Triad	Solution	Difficulty
Triad	Solution	p(unsolved)	Normalized
Falling Actor Dust	STAR³	.15	-2.38
Broken Clear Eye	GLASS²	.20	-2.06
Skunk Kings Boiled	CABBAGE¹	.20	-2.06
Widow Bite Monkey	SPIDER¹	.25	-1.75
Bass Complex Sleep	DEEP¹	.30	-1.44
Coin Quick Spoon	SILVER²	.30	-1.44
Gold Stool Tender	BAR²	.30	-1.56
Time Hair Stretch	LONG²	.30	-1.44
Cracker Union Rabbit	JACK²	.35	-1.13
Bald Screech Emblem	EAGLE¹	.40	-0.81
Blood Music Cheese	BLUE¹	.40	-0.81
Manners Round Tennis	TABLE²	.40	-0.81
Off Trumpet Atomic	BLAST²	.40	-0.81
Playing Credit Report	CARD²	.40	-0.81
Rabbit Cloud House	WHITE²	.40	-0.81
Room Blood Salts	BATH¹	.40	-0.81
Salt Deep Foam	SEA²	.40	-0.81
Square Cardboard Open	BOX²	.40	-0.81
Water Tobacco Stove	PIPE²	.40	-0.81
Ache Hunter Cabbage	HEAD²	.45	-0.50
Chamber Staff Box	MUSIC¹	.45	-0.50
High Book Sour	NOTE²	.45	-0.50
Lick Sprinkle Mines	SALT¹	.45	-0.50
Pure Blue Fall	WATER²	.45	-0.50
Snack Line Birthday	PARTY²	.45	-0.50
Square Telephone Club	BOOK²	.45	-0.50
Surprise Wrap Care	GIFT²	.45	-0.50
Ticket Shop Broker	PAWN²	.45	-0.50
Barrel Root Belly	BEER²	.50	-0.19
Blade Witted Weary	DULL²	.50	-0.19
Cherry Time Smell	BLOSSOM¹	.50	-0.19
Notch Flight Spin	TOP²	.50	-0.19
Strap Pocket Time	WATCH²	.50	-0.19
Walker Main Sweeper	STREET¹	.50	-0.19
Wicked Bustle Slicker	CITY¹	.50	-0.19
Chocolate Fortune Tin	COOKIE¹	.55	+0.13
Color Numbers Oil	PAINT²	.55	+0.13
Mouse Sharp Blue	CHEESE¹	.55	+0.13
Sandwich Golf Foot	CLUB²	.55	+0.13
Silk Cream Even	SMOOTH²	.55	+0.13
Speak Money Street	EASY²	.55	+0.13
Big Leaf Shade	TREE²	.60	+0.44
Envy Golf Beans	GREEN¹	.60	+0.44
Hall Car Swimming	POOL²	.60	+0.44
Ink Herring Neck	RED²	.60	+0.44
Measure Desk Scotch	TAPE²	.60	+0.44
Strike Same Tennis	MATCH²	.60	+0.44
Athletes Web Rabbit	FOOT¹	.65	+0.63
Board Magic Death	BLACK¹	.65	+0.63
Lapse Vivid Elephant	MEMORY¹	.65	+0.63
Puss Tart Spoiled	SOUR¹	.65	+0.63
Rock Times Steel	HARD³	.65	+0.63
Stop Petty Sneak	THIEF¹	.65	+0.75
Thread Pine Pain	NEEDLE²	.65	+0.75
Zone Still Noise	QUIET²	.65	+0.63
Cloth Sad Out	SACK²	.70	+1.06
Cotton Bathtub Tonic	GIN²	.70	+1.06
Foot Collection Out	STAMP²	.70	+1.06
Inch Deal Peg	SQUARE¹	.70	+1.06
Jump Kill Bliss	JOY¹	.70	+1.06
Magic Plush Floor	CARPET²	.70	+1.06
Note Dive Chair	HIGH¹	.70	+1.06
Stalk Trainer King	LION¹	.70	+1.06
Bump Throat Sum	LUMP²	.75	+1.34
Shopping Washer Picture	WINDOW¹	.75	+1.34
Blank White Lines	PAPER²	.80	+1.56
Stick Light Birthday	CANDLE²	.80	+1.69
Sore Shoulder Sweat	COLD¹	.90	+2.31

^{1From RAT, Form 1 of Mednick & Mednick
(1967).
^{2From Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard, & Parker (1990).
^{3Modified from Bowers et al.(1990).}}

A conceptually similar set of items is found in the Compound Word Problems
devised by Bowden and his colleagues for their studies of insight
problem-solving (Bowden & Jung-Beeman, 2003). In CWPs, a triad
of words is presented each of which can form a compound word or a two-word phrase
with a single solution word. An example is
french, car, shoe
to which the solution is, of course
horn.
Thus, CWPs are actually a subset of RAT problems.

Along similar lines (but earlier), Dailey (1978) devised a Categorical Items
Test, whose items are classified according to a 2x2 scheme: semantic vs. idiomatic; and
low vs. high uniformity.

In semantic items, the response is semantically related to each of the
stimuli. An example is plumber, tobacco, and tube, all of which
share features of meaning to pipe.
In idiomatic items, the response is related to each of the stimuli through an
idiom, as opposed to semantic similarity. An example is glass, beef,
hog, all of which form familiar idioms with the response ground (as
in "ground glass", "ground beef", and "ground
hog"), but none of which is associatively related to the response.
CIT items thus closely resemble CWP items.

Within each class, Dailey further classified items in terms of their degree
of associative uniformity

For items of high uniformity, Dailey judged that none of the stimulus
terms was more helpful than the others in generating the response. an
example is board, magic, death, each of which appears to be fairly
strongly related to black.
For items of low uniformity, Daily judged that one of the stimulus terms
was much more strongly associated with the response than the others.
An example is wicked, bustle, slicker, where "slicker" is
very closely related to city, but the others are not.

References

Bowden, E.M., & Jung-Beeman, M. (2003). Normative data for
144 compound remote associate problems. Behavioral Research Methods,
Instrumentation, and Computers, 35, 634-639.
Bowers, K.S. (1984). On being unconsciously influenced and informed. In K.S. Bowers & D. Meichenbaum (Eds.), The unconscious reconsidered (pp.
227-272). New York: Wiley-Interscience.
Bowers, K.S. (1994). Intuition. In R.J. Sernberg (Ed.), Encyclopedia of
intelligence (pp. 613-617). New York: Macmillan.
Bowers, K.S., Farvolden, P., & Mermigis, L. (1995). Intuitive antecedents
of insight. In S.M. Smith, T.M. Ward, & R.A. Finke (Eds.), The creative
cognition approach (pp. 27-52). Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press.
Bowers, K.S., Regehr, G., Balthazard, C.G., & parker, K. (1990).
Intuition in the context of discovery. Cognitive Psychology, 22,
72-110.
Daialey, D.P. (1978). an analysis and evaluation of the internal
validity of the Remote Associates Test: Wht does it measure? Educational
& Psychological Measurement, 38, 1031-1040.
Dorfman, J., Shames, V.A., & Kihlstrom, J.F. (1996). Intuition,
incubation, and insight: Implicit cognition in problem-solving. In G. Underwood
(Ed.), Implicit cognition (pp. 257-296). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kihlstrom, J.F., Shames, V.A., & Dorfman, J. (1996). Initimations of
memory and thought. In L. Reder (Ed.), Implicit memory and metacognition
(pp. 1-23). Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Mednick, S.A. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological
Review, 69, 220-232.
Mednick, S.A., & Mednick, M.T. (1967). Examiner’s manual: Remote
Associates Test. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Shames, V.A. (1994). Is there such a thing as implicit problem-solving?
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona.

This page last revised 01/11/11 04:13:01 PM
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	In semantic items, the response is semantically related to each of the stimuli. An example is plumber, tobacco, and tube, all of which share features of meaning to pipe.
	In idiomatic items, the response is related to each of the stimuli through an idiom, as opposed to semantic similarity. An example is glass, beef, hog, all of which form familiar idioms with the response ground (as in "ground glass", "ground beef", and "ground hog"), but none of which is associatively related to the response. CIT items thus closely resemble CWP items.

	For items of high uniformity, Dailey judged that none of the stimulus terms was more helpful than the others in generating the response. an example is board, magic, death, each of which appears to be fairly strongly related to black.
	For items of low uniformity, Daily judged that one of the stimulus terms was much more strongly associated with the response than the others. An example is wicked, bustle, slicker, where "slicker" is very closely related to city, but the others are not.