Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT4) Practice Exam

In a lexical decision task, participants respond to words based on how quickly they can associate them with a preceding term, in this case, "bugs." The correct answer indicates the word that would likely take the longest to respond to, which is "sky."

The reasoning behind this lies in the semantic relationship between the words. "Bugs" is commonly associated with small creatures, particularly insects. Therefore, options like "insect," "spider," and "critter" are all closely related to "bugs" and typically evoke immediate associations in the context of living creatures. This close semantic connection would allow participants to recognize and respond to these words relatively quickly.

On the other hand, "sky" has no direct connection to the concept of "bugs." It belongs to a completely different category—referring to the atmosphere rather than any living creature. Thus, participants would likely need more time to process and decide that "sky" does not fit with "bugs," resulting in a longer response time compared to the other options.