BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//events.la.psu.edu//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20201101T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20200308T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:17028-1bc2b6b47b61e9e0e1d9e8b27256df20@events.la.psu.edu DTSTAMP:20260412T101856Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240301T090000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240301T103000 SUMMARY:Dr. Roger Beaty DESCRIPTION:“Making Connections: Creativity Supports\n\nLearning Through Associative Thinking”\n\nRoger Beaty\, Ph.D.\n\nAssistant Professor\, P enn State\n\nDepartment of Psychology\n\nCreativity is key to learning s uccess: people who produce more original ideas tend to learn better. Yet it is unclear why—despite decades of research on creativity and learnin g\, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. In two studies with undergraduate students\, we examined whe ther creativity supports learning through associative thinking—the abili ty to generate novel word associations—which is central to creativity bu t has not previously been tied to creativity and learning. To assess ass ociative thinking\, we used a word association task requiring students t o produce semantically distant words. To assess learning\, we used a pai red-associate language learning paradigm\, where students learned the En glish meaning of Lithuanian words. In Study 1 (N = 147)\, we found that students who generated more semantically distant word associations learn ed significantly more words on the language learning test 24 hours later \, controlling for general intelligence. In Study 2 (N = 141)\, we exten ded the effect to naturalistic creativity tasks—writing short stories an d sketching line drawings—finding associative thinking mediated the rela tionship between creativity and learning. Taken together\, the findings indicate that creativity's contribution to learning operates in part thr ough a shared cognitive capacity for making new connections.\n\nFor more details: https://events.la.psu.edu/event/dr-roger-beaty/ X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:

“Making Connections: Creativity Supports
Learning Through Associative Thinking”

Roger Beaty, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Penn St ate
Department of Psychology

Creativity is key to learning su ccess: people who produce more original ideas tend to learn better. Yet it is unclear why—despite decades of research on creativity and learning , the cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly un derstood. In two studies with undergraduate students, we examined whethe r creativity supports learning through associative thinking—the ability to generate novel word associations—which is central to creativity but h as not previously been tied to creativity and learning. To assess associ ative thinking, we used a word association task requiring students to pr oduce semantically distant words. To assess learning, we used a paired-a ssociate language learning paradigm, where students learned the English meaning of Lithuanian words. In Study 1 (N = 147), we found that student s who generated more semantically distant word associations learned sign ificantly more words on the language learning test 24 hours later, contr olling for general intelligence. In Study 2 (N = 141), we extended the e ffect to naturalistic creativity tasks—writing short stories and sketchi ng line drawings—finding associative thinking mediated the relationship between creativity and learning. Taken together, the findings indicate t hat creativity's contribution to learning operates in part through a sha red cognitive capacity for making new connections.

For more detail s: https://eve nts.la.psu.edu/event/dr-roger-beaty/

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