The stability of the previously obtained relationship between the difficulty and the cultural availability of RAT items is demonstrated. Item difficulty is greatest for those items whose answers are not readily available in the local culture as associates to the stimulus words of the item. This effect has been obtained in two geographically separate study populations, one largely metropolitan in origin and the other heavily rural. It also is shown that the cultural availability levels of items vary across the study populations. The implications of the variation among RAT items in cultural availability both within and between cultures are discussed.
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