After failing to solve items from the Remote Associates Test (RAT), subjects showed significant priming effects when the solutions were presented in a lexical-decision task (Experiment 1). Experiments 2 and 3 found no significant priming effect when subjects were asked merely to remember the RAT elements, or for targets that were associates of only two of the three elements in incoherent RAT items. Experiment 4 showed that identifying a correct solution took longer than lexical decision, and that the probability of correct identifications for a given item was uncorrelated to the priming effect for the item. Experiment 5 yielded item-difficulty norms for 68 RAT items as well as a replication of the priming effect observed for unsolved items in Experiment 1. In Experiment 6, a significant priming was observed for targets that were solutions to hard items but not for solutions to easy items. This research provides evidence for implicit problem-solving, which is nonconscious but not automatic, and is neither a perceptual nor a purely memory-related phenomenon.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, with rates increasing over the past several decades. This study examined whether problem-solving performance differs in those with no suicide ideation or attempts compared to those with only suicide ideation and with those with a history of attempts. Results demonstrated that when accounting for depression, problem-solving accuracy was positively predictive for the suicidal ideation group. Furthermore, the suicidal ideation group solved more problems on average than both those with no history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors and the suicide attempt group. The current study was somewhat underpowered and therefore should be interpreted with caution. Additionally, this is the first study to use the problem-solving task when investigating suicide and the first to use the task in an online manner. The findings suggest some meaningful differences that will lay the groundwork for future investigations.