So, next time you’re feeling creative, embrace your associative thinking! You never know what hidden gems might emerge when you start connecting those mental dots. Want to learn more about the science behind creative thought and associative thinking? Check out the full article!
What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of creativity? Some people may associate creativity with art; others with imagination, novelty, or expression. This exercise illustrates the phenomenon of association – how one concept links to others in memory, and how people vary in the associations they make [1]. Creative thinking has long been conceptualized as involving an associative process over memory, where concepts are combined to form new and effective ideas [2–6]. However, associative thinking has been historically challenging to study, due in part to methodological limitations in modeling memory and the retrieval processes operating on it.