Bilingualism and creativity: Benefits from cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility

Abstract

Bilingualism has been shown to be associated with creativity, but the mechanisms of this association are not very well understood. One possibility is that the skills that bilinguals use in switching back and forth between languages also promote the cognitive processes associated with creativity. We hypothesized that high-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals would show higher convergent and divergent thinking than low-proficient bilinguals, with the differences being mediated by cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility, respectively. Chinese university students (N = 54) were classified as high-proficient (n = 27) and low-proficient (n = 27) bilinguals based on their performance on the National English Test for College Students. As expected, group comparisons showed that the high-proficient group had higher scores on the Remote Associates Test (RAT, convergent thinking) and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT, divergent thinking). Also as expected, the association between bilingualism and convergent thinking was mediated by scores on a Stroop task (cognitive inhibition), and the association between bilingualism and divergent thinking was mediated by scores on a More-odd shifting task (cognitive flexibility). These findings suggest that bilingual learning can promote the development of different components of creativity through stronger cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility. The results provide empirical evidence for the relationship and mechanism between bilingual learning and creativity.

Quantifying Executive Functions: Bilingual Education's Cognitive Impact in Special Education

“…Bilingualism, the skill of speaking and understanding two languages fluently, is widespread globally, with more than half of the world's population being bilingual or multilingual (ROEPER, 2011). Bilingualism's cognitive benefits have received much focus lately, especially regarding executive functions, which are advanced cognitive processes that manage goal-oriented behavior, cognitive control, and decision-making (Xia et al, 2022). This research seeks to investigate the measurable influence of bilingual education on executive functions in kids within special education environments.…”

Multilingualism, multicultural experience, cognition, and creativity

“…However, none of these explanations has received strong empirical support so far, and some contradictory work exists. The studies that did find a connection between bilingualism, creativity and selective attention (Kharkhurin, 2011;Xia et al, 2022) compared linguistically advanced students with less advanced ones, hence the effects of interest may be contaminated by a general positive effect of intelligence or personality. Kharkhurin and Wei (2015) also reported that selective attention was not related to code-switching habits; so even if selective attention is related to creativity, it is not clear how it connects to multilingualism, except through the (controversial) general effect of enhanced executive functions.…”