2.6.1. Alternative Uses Task (AUT)
The Alternative Uses Task (AUT) is a popular test for assessing divergent thinking. Participants were asked to give verbal reports on as many non-conventional uses as possible for three everyday objects within two minutes. Two lists of objects were used for each experimental session (pre-test: newspaper, bucket, and umbrella; post-test: paper clip, can and shoes). Each AUT’s score was evaluated in terms of fluency, flexibility, and originality (Guilford, 1950). The fluency score was determined as the total number of responses; the flexibility score as the number of response categories; and the originality score as the frequency of occurrence of a certain response across participants. According to Radel et al. (2015), a response frequency percentage of less than 1% received 2 points, a frequency of 1% to 5% received 1 point, and a frequency of more than 5% received 0 points. Two experienced coders of creativity tasks examined the responses of the participants and their inter-rater reliability was satisfactory (ICC: 0.993 for fluency, 0.859 for flexibility, 0.880 for originality).