Creative minds bridge remote associates from flatter hierarchies

Correct: C — Flat associative hierarchies that include many remote responses

Mednick (1962) argued that creativity depends on the structure of one's associative hierarchy. Less creative individuals have steep hierarchies — a few common responses dominate when given a cue word — while creative individuals have flatter hierarchies, with weaker but broader networks of associates. The Remote Associates Test (RAT) was designed to operationalize this: solvers find a single word that bridges three loosely-related cues (e.g., "cottage / Swiss / cake" → "cheese"). Decades of work have linked RAT performance to insight problem-solving, divergent-thinking measures, and right-hemisphere semantic processing, although the original "associative hierarchy" construct has been refined in modern accounts of creative cognition.