联想能力被认为是创造性认知中的一个核心因素。根据Mednick的远距离联想理论，能否将不同概念、元素进行联系与整合是创造性的核心。然而，早期对联想能力的测量存在文化敏感、不够客观、难以比较等缺陷，缺乏足够有力的实证证据支持这一论断。近年来，随着网络科学研究的兴起，有一些新的计算方法被用到对被试联想能力的度量上来。研究者发现，被试语义网络的特征参数与个体的创造性有着密切的关系。但在创造性问题解决领域，还没有研究关注联想能力对于个体问题解决能力的影响。为探究联想能力是否影响个体在创造性问题解决中的表现，本研究设计了三个实验来检验创造性问题解决中联想能力的作用机制。其中，研究一依被试在顿悟问题问卷上的表现将被试分为高分组和低分组，比较高分组和低分组的语义网络结构属性。结果发现：相比低分组被试，空间顿悟问题高分组的被试的语义网络表现出更高的小世界属性，言语顿悟问题则未发现此效应。该结果说明，空间顿悟问题可能与传统的创造性测验更相似，都需要联想能力作支持。研究二、三则进一步使用九点问题和八币问题探讨在空间顿悟问题不同解决阶段中联想能力的作用。总的来说，研究结果表明联想能力是达成重构阶段与非重构阶段的一个必要不充分条件，但相对而言对达成重构阶段更加重要，从而支持了创造性认知的序列加工说。

Associative ability is considered to be a core factor in creative cognition. According to Mednick's remote association theory, the ability to connect and integrate different concepts and elements is the nature of creativity. However, the early measurements of association abilities are culturally sensitive, not objective and difficult to compare between participants. Thus there lacks sufficient and strong empirical evidence to support this theory. In recent years, however, with the rise of network science research, some new calculation methods have been used to measure the associative abilities. Researchers found that the characteristic parameters of the subject's semantic network are closely related to creativity. However, in the field of creative problem solving, no research has focused on the imfluence of association ability on individual problem solving ability so far. In order to explore whether association abilities influence performance on creative problem solving, this study designed three experiments to test the mechanism of association ability in creative problem solving. Among them, Study 1 selected 125 participants, the subjects were divided into high and low groups according to their performance on an insight test, and the semantic network structure attributes of the high and low groups were compared. The results show that compared with the low-group subjects, the semantic network of the high group on spatial insight problems showed higher small-world attributes, and this effect did not appear on verbal insight problems. The results suggests that the spatial insight problems may be more similar to the traditional creative test as they both need associative abilities. The second and third studies further explore the role of association ability in different stages of solving the spatial insight problems using the nine-point problem and the eight-coin problem. In sum, the results show that the association ability is a necessary but insufficient condition to finish the restructuring phase and the non- restructuring phase, but it is relatively more important in the reconstruction phase. Thus support the serial view of creative cognition.