Creativity supports learning through associative thinking

Introduction

In today’s complex world, creativity is essential for academic and career success. Creativity consistently predicts learning outcomes, with robust links between creative abilities and academic achievement^{1, 2, 3–4}. How does creativity contribute to learning? In the present research, we explore one cognitive process that may tie creativity and learning: associative thinking, the ability to make connections between concepts. Creativity involves connecting pieces of information to form ideas; likewise, learning, particularly associative learning (e.g., foreign language vocabulary learning), involves linking new information to existing concepts in memory. However, whether associative thinking directly enhances learning remains unknown. We conducted two studies with undergraduate students to assess the role of associative thinking in paired-associate language learning, testing whether associative thinking can explain the relationship between creativity and learning.

Creativity and learning are multifaceted constructs that have been studied in a variety of ways. Here, we operationalize creativity as divergent thinking—the ability to produce diverse solutions to open-ended problems⁵. One of the cognitive processes long considered important for creativity is associative thinking^{6, 7–8}. Creativity utilizes both free association (i.e., spontaneously connecting concepts through bottom-up memory activation) and goal-directed association (i.e., strategically combining concepts through top-down control). Although associative thinking resembles key learning processes—particularly associative learning—no study has tested its role as a shared mechanism of learning and creativity.

Educational research on learning and creativity has mainly focused on correlating outcome variables, such as GPA and divergent thinking performance. A meta-analysis found that creativity predicts academic achievement (r = 0.22), indicating a small but significant positive relationship between academic accomplishment—often considered a marker of learning—and creativity¹. Subsequent work suggests relations between academic learning and creative ability may be domain-specific, with domain knowledge providing a necessary condition for creativity in a domain (e.g., math and language)⁹. These findings highlight creativity’s contribution to important learning outcomes—pointing to potential domain-specific effects—though they say less about how creativity and learning relate at a mechanistic level. Further, such studies did not account for the confounding role of intelligence, which has independently been linked to learning^10,11, academic achievement^12,13, and creativity¹⁴.

Research in the field of intelligence has viewed learning and creativity as related cognitive abilities. In particular, divergent...