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Fifty years ago, Sarnoff Med nick defined the process of creative thinking as

"the forming of associative elements into new combinations which either

meet specific requirements or are in some way useful.The more mutually remote the

elements of the new combination, the more creative the process or solution."

Med nick argued that creative people have flat associative hierarchies: they are

better able to access distant, remote associations. For example, when given the

concept "table," Med nick predicted that creative people would be more likely to

retrieve more remote associations such as "leg" or "food." In contrast, Mednick

argued that less creative thinkers have a steep associative hierarchy, in which

words with a higher associative strength (e.g., chair) would be more likely to

enter their minds:

The figure presents a graph of two lines. The following five words are

indicated along the horizontal axis, from left to right: chair, cloth, wood, leg,

and food. The vertical axis is labeled "Likelihood of retrieval." The word low is

indicated at the bottom of the vertical axis and the word high is indicated at

the top of the vertical axis. One line represents a flat associative hierarchy

and one line represents a steep associative hierarchy. The flat associative

hierarchy line begins at the word chair, approximately midway up the

vertical axis. It curves slowly downward and to the right until it ends at the

word food, approximately one-fourth of the way up the vertical axis. The steep

associative hierarchy line begins at the word chair, at the top of the vertical

axis. It moves steeply downward and to the right until it reaches the word cloth,

slightly lower than midway up the vertical axis. It then moves gradually downward

and to the right until it reaches the word leg, slightly above the horizontal

axis. At this point, the line levels off until it reaches the word food. The two

lines intersect at the word cloth, slightly lower than midway up the vertical

axis.

[One] tool that has been used recently to look at creative cognition is

Latent Semantic Analysis(LSA), an objective scoring method where you can derive

a measure of semantic distance.With LSA, you can quantify the similarity between

words or texts based on statistic alanalysis of the responses of a large

population.

Using this technique, Ranjani Prabhakaran, Adam Green, and Jeremy Gray found

that "thin slices" of verbal behavior (single-word utterances) predicted creative

cognition. In their "verbgeneration" task, a noun was presented every few

seconds, and the participant was instructed to say the first verb that came to

mind in response to the noun. The researchers analyzed these mantic distance of

the responses using LSA.

They found that the greater the semantic distance of the noun-verb pairs, the

higher the levels of creative cognition, story-writing ability, openness to

experience, and creative achievement. Interestingly, they also found a

relationship between semantic distance and traditional measures of "convergent

thinking," such as IQ and working memory. This suggests that creative thinking

doesn't just involve combining distant associations, but also requires

consciously accessing the associations.

According to the graph, people with flat associative hierarchies and people

with steep associative hierarchies are roughly equally likely to associate which

word with the concept "table"?

A.Chair

B.Cloth

C.Wood

D.Leg

重点单词：

likelihood ['laiklihud] n. 可能性

objective [əb'dʒektiv] adj. 客观的，目标的

contrast ['kɔntræst,kən'træst] n. 差别，对比，对照物 v. 对比，成对照

population [.pɔpju'leiʃən] n. 人口 ，(全体)居民，人数

creative [kri'eitiv] adj. 创造性的

defined [di'faind] adj. 有定义的，确定的;清晰的，轮廓分明的 v. 使

vertical ['və:tikəl] adj. 垂直的，顶点的，纵向的n. 垂直物

approximately [ə'prɔksimitli] adv. 近似地，大约

latent ['leitnt] adj. 潜伏的，潜在的n. 隐约的指印，指

associate [ə'səuʃieit] n. 同伴，伙伴，合伙人

答案：B

解析：

Choice B is the best answer. The lines on the graph are very close to each

other above the word "cloth." This indicates that people with flat associative

hierarchies and people with steep associative hierarchies are almost equally

likely to associate the word "cloth" with the concept "table."