Creativity is a key 21st-century skill and a consistent predictor of academic learning outcomes. Despite decades of research on creativity and learning, little is known about the cognitive mechanisms underlying their relationship. In two studies, we examined whether creativity supports associative learning through associative thinking--the ability…

This study was designed to examine the relationship between associative clustering, creative potential, and the slope of associative hierarchies. It was predicted that people whose verbal associations are organized into neatly separated clusters will have lower creative potentials as measured by the Remote Associates Test (RAT) and steeper slopes…