The Usual and the Unusual: Solving Remote Associates Test Tasks Using Simple Statistical Natural Language Processing Based on Language Use

Abstract

In this study we show how complex creative relations can arise from fairly frequent semantic relations observed in everyday language. By doing this, we reflect on some key cognitive aspects of linguistic and general creativity. In our experimentation, we automated the process of solving a battery of Remote Associates Test tasks. By applying Statistical Natural Language Processing techniques to a large web‐based corpus, we perform a frequency and collocation analysis of the test items. Results show that 37% of the 68 tasks were automatically solved, whereas human accuracy reached 43%. Our method outperformed humans in the tasks rated as difficult: 38% and 32%, respectively. Highly relevant is that the novel and adequate relations established in order to solve the RAT were not previously present in the corpus. The frequency based approach pervades all stages of our method: during the divergent stage, highly frequent collocations are listed, while the convergent stage starts by matching each task's triads output, shrinking that list, and finalizing it by choosing the least frequent, therefore more informative and often correct, result. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model in overcoming functional fixedness and understanding cognitive salience in the creative process.

Right temporal alpha oscillations as a neural mechanism for inhibiting obvious associations

“…In contrary, the cues of the RAT item high/teacher/mate (solution: school) do not share any strong common association. The ability to inhibit the most obvious but misleading semantic association is therefore of particular benefit for solving difficult remote associate problems (28), and more creative individuals are found to successfully avoid most common but incorrect candidate solutions (6). However, the neural mechanism underlying this process of inhibiting the habitual, most-obvious associations and promoting the remote, less-dominant associations during creative problem solving has largely been uncharacterized.…”

“…Spectral power in each frequency immediately following the RAT item presentation (whole trial and also 0-1 s) was log-transformed (base 10) due to its positively skewed distribution and divided by the total (average) . Therefore, we analyzed relative power in each frequency band, theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz), beta (12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), and gamma (30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40), as well as the IAF, defined as the frequency with the highest power from 8 to 12 Hz (±2 Hz).…”

Remotely Close Associations: Openness to Experience and Semantic Memory Structure

“…Finally, one study examined the RAT with both convergent and divergent thinking tasks, and found relations to intelligence, divergent thinking, creative achievement and openness to experience (Benedek et al, 2012). This suggests that the task may involve components of both convergent and divergent thinking (Klein & Badia, 2015).…”

A Spiking Neuron Model of Word Associations for the Remote Associates Test

“…Mednick's proposal about flat associative hierarchies of high-scoring individuals has been supported experimentally by studies showing that indviduals who score higher on the RAT tend to avoid high-frequency answers on both incorrect and correct trials (Gupta et al, 2012 ; Kenett et al, 2014 ). This observation was further supported using NLP approaches that achieve better-than-human performance on the RAT (Klein and Badia, 2015 ; Olteteanu and Falomir, 2015 ). The properties of individual subjects' semantic networks correlates with their performance on the RAT (Kenett et al, 2014 ; Monaghan et al, 2014 ).…”

“…Performance on the RAT has been characterized by experimental, theoretical, and computational studies (Gupta et al, 2012 ; Kenett et al, 2014 ; Klein and Badia, 2015 ; Olteteanu and Falomir, 2015 ). Mednick's proposal about flat associative hierarchies of high-scoring individuals has been supported experimentally by studies showing that indviduals who score higher on the RAT tend to avoid high-frequency answers on both incorrect and correct trials (Gupta et al, 2012 ; Kenett et al, 2014 ).…”