Assessing creativity independently of language: A language-independent remote associate task (LI-RAT)

Abstract

Most creativity measures are either complex or language-dependent, hindering cross-cultural creativity assessment. We have therefore developed and tested a simple, language-independent insight task based on pictures in the style of the widely used verbal remote associate task (RAT). We demonstrate that the language-independent RAT (LI-RAT) allows assessment of different aspects of insight across large samples with different languages. It also correlates with other creativity and general problem-solving tasks. The entire stimulus set, including its preliminary normative data, is made freely available. This information can be used to select items based on accuracy, mean solution time, likelihood to produce an insight, or conceptual and perceptual similarity between the pictures per item.

Keywords: AHA experience; Creativity; Creativity assessment; Insight; Remote associate task.

Fig. 1

Timeline of the LI-RAT paradigm and example item. Note. Participants are asked to find an object (hourglass) that connects the two seemingly unrelated presented objects (corset, stopwatch) within max. 45 s. They are told that the solution is conceptually but not perceptually related to the stopwatch and perceptually but not conceptually related to the corset (see right panel). Upon solution, they are requested to rate their AHA! experience (including how sudden the solution appeared to them; see left panel).

Fig. 2

Bland–Altman Plots for performance measures of LI-RAT comparing between English, German, and Spanish samples (item level). Note. RT = solution time; En = English sample; Ger = German sample; Sp = Spanish sample. The outer thick lines represent the 1.96 standard deviation from the mean (middle thick line). The thinner lines around the thick lines represent the respective 95% confidence interval.

Fig. 3

Bland–Altman plots for performance measures of LI-RAT comparing between English, German, and Spanish samples (item level). Note. En = English sample; Ger = German sample; Sp = Spanish sample. The outer thick lines represent the 1.96 standard deviation from the mean (middle thick line). The thinner lines around the thick lines represent the respective 95% confidence interval.

Fig. 4

Distribution of average performance and AHA! experience in the LI-RAT for an English-, German-, and Spanish-speaking sample (subject level). Note. The English-speaking sample included 155 participants, whereas the German-speaking sample only included 60 participants, and the Spanish 62 participants. The values represent the average performance and average AHA! experience including suddenness per person.

Fig. 5

Correlation of LI-RAT accuracy with other creativity and problem-solving tasks across participants. Note. Acc = accuracy; C-RAT = compound remote associate task; Raven = Raven advanced progressive matrices; AUT = Alternative Uses Task; orig = originality; flex = flexibility; flu = fluency. The boxes in red represent significant correlations at a p-value level < .05, and the values are Spearman correlation coefficients.

Fig. 6

Bland–Altman plots for performance and AHA! experience measures comparing LI-RAT and C-RAT (subject level). Note. AHA = AHA! experience; RT = solution time. The outer thick lines represent the 1.96 standard deviation from the mean (middle thick line). The thinner lines around the thick lines represent the respective 95% confidence interval. The legend “n” indicating the amount of subjects per data point only refers to accuracy.