Exploring the relationships between analogical, analytical, and creative thinking

The purpose of this research study was to examine the relationships between analogical, analytical, and creative thinking and other relevant issues through a carefully constructed and self-designed instrument. Participants were 287 six-graders living in an urban area of Taiwan. Major findings are shown as follows. Whereas three factors with larger-than-one eigenvalues were extracted, the g factor can be considered existing in the present study because the variance explained by the first principal factor was much larger than those explained by the other two. The two types of novel analogies were significantly and negatively correlated with each other. Analogical thinking straddles both the fields of analytical and creative thinking. Of the four analogy subscales, the traditional analogical-verbal section was most capable of predicting analytical thinking, creative thinking, and academic achievements. Discussions of the findings were presented in the context of the existing literature.