The excel data workbook comprises raw data from 3 experimental studies, and details of the associated task materials. Each experiment followed a consistent procedure for collection, with variation of the independent variable of sound (Experiment 1; Quiet vs. Steady-state speech vs. Changing-state speech Experiment 2; Quiet vs. Steady-state tones vs. Changing-state tones, Experiment 3; Quiet vs. Rotated speech vs. Normal speech) and a consistent independent variable of Compound Remote Associate Task (CRAT) difficulty (Easy vs. Hard). Each experiment utilised a fully within-participants design. 

Experimental Materials 

The excel workbook contains two sheets providing details of the experimental materials. This consists of the normative data for the CRAT problems. The data sheets entitled Experiment 1 & 2_materials and Experiment 3_Materials provide the following information. Columns A, B & C are the three cue words for each CRAT, column D denotes the difficulty of the CRAT (easy vs. hard) column e the normative solution rate, column f the normative solution time, column g the set allocation. 

Data Collection Procedure

Prior to collection, written informed consent was obtained. Participants completed the task individually on a laptop computer, with headphones attached. The experiment was executed on a PC running an E-Prime 2.0 program (Psychology Software Tools, Sharpsburg, PA, USA) that controlled stimulus presentation and recorded participant responses. Participants were provided with instructions to ignore the background sound played through the headphones, and were assured that they would not be asked anything about it later. An example CRAT item was presented along with its answer. To ensure familiarity with the task and computer programme, participants completed three practice problems, not drawn from the experimental set of CRAT items, before undertaking the experimental problems. Each participant was permitted up to 30 seconds to attempt to solve each CRAT problem. On identifying the answer, they were asked to press the space bar to reveal a text field to insert their response, before continuing onto the next screen. Participants were then presented with a target cue on the screen and the next problem. They could not go back to the same problem, or revise their answer, once they had entered a response. Cue-words were presented in 30-point Times New Roman font. For each CRAT problem all three cue-words were presented simultaneously along the same horizontal plane. 

In Experiments 1 & 3, a randomly allocated subset of participants provided a self-reported solution strategy indicating the extent to which the problem was solved by analytic or insight means. This was recorded on a four-point scale (1 indicated an analytic response, and 4 an insight response). Participants were fully debriefed on completion of the experiment.