Bilingualism and Creativity: Benefits in Convergent Thinking Come with Losses in Divergent Thinking

Abstract

Bilingualism is commonly assumed to improve creativity but the mechanisms underlying creative acts, and the way these mechanisms are affected by bilingualism, are not very well understood. We hypothesize that learning to master multiple languages drives individuals toward a relatively focused cognitive-control state that exerts strong top-down impact on information processing and creates strong local competition for selection between cognitive codes. Considering the control requirements posed by creativity tasks tapping into convergent and divergent thinking, this predicts that high-proficient bilinguals should outperform low-proficient bilinguals in convergent thinking, while low-proficient bilinguals might be better in divergent thinking. Comparing low- and high-proficient bilinguals on convergent-thinking and divergent-thinking tasks indeed showed a high-proficient bilingual advantage for convergent thinking but a low-proficient bilingual advantage for fluency in divergent thinking. These findings suggest that bilingualism should not be related to “creativity” as a unitary concept but, rather, to the specific processes and mechanisms that underlie creativity.

Language Control and Code-switching

“…Competitive control requires a narrowing of attention that is arguably enhanced when participants must use one rather than another language in a dual language context. An ingenious experiment by Wu and Thierry (2013) found that during a dual language context, bilinguals were indeed more effective at resisting non-verbal interference as tested in a non-verbal flanker task (see also (Hommel et al 2011) for evidence of benefits on a convergent thinking task). Cooperative control, by contrast, is predicted to increase the breadth of attention.…”

The Effects of Foreign Language Learning on Creativity

“…It is comprised of four scales: fluency (the number of ideas and solutions), originality (the rarity of ideas), elaboration (the number of added ideas, and the ability to develop and elaborate on ideas), and flexibility (the number of different categories of relevant responses being used) (Craft, 2001;Hommel, Colzato, Fischer, & Christoffels, 2011;Villalba, 2008). Since half of the participants did not have English knowledge the Persian translation of this test was used.…”

“…Furthermore, he asserted that most studies were conducted on children and employed measures of divergent thinking to assess creativity. Hommel, Colzato, Fischer, and Christoffels (2011) affirmed the positive impact of bilingualism on creativity, positing that it is the underlying processes and mechanisms of creativity that are influenced by bilingual practice not the unitary concept per se.…”

Use of Multi-touch Gestures for Capturing Solution Steps in Arithmetic Word Problems

“…The most common question type used in such systems tends to be based on convergent, selected responses. Some practitioners have argued that the practice has little pedagogic value beyond testing surface learning (Hommel et al 2011).In solving a two-step arithmetic word problem for instance, selecting a single best answer among other options for grading presents some difficulties. First, only the final answer is compared against the correct answer, making it difficult to obtain intermediate results or award partial marks as possible with paper based assessments.…”