Towards Using Cognitive Word Associates to Create Functional Remote Associates Test Problems

Abstract

Human creativity is assessed with a variety of tools, one of which is the Remote Associates Test. Two linguistic variants of this test exist: the compound and the functional Remote Associates Test. While normative data and solvers for the compound RAT exist, data sets of functional items are very rarely encountered in the literature. Such data sets would allow (i) a deeper understanding and the simulation of the cognitive associative processes used in creativity tasks and (ii) the comparison of performance and process between the two types of queries. In this paper, an approach to knowledge acquisition and computational generation of functional Remote Associates Test items is explored. Possibilities of cognitive evaluation are discussed.