Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin

Bilingual verbal and nonverbal creative behavior

The study investigates whether bilingualism has a measurable contribution to verbal and nonverbal creative performance. The performance of Russian—English bilingual and English monolingual college students residing in the USA was compared on the verbal and nonverbal indicators of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. The results demonstrated a bilingual advantage in nonverbal creativity and a monolingual advantage in verbal creativity. These findings contribute to the discussion of domain specificity of bilingual cognitive abilities with regard to creative thinking.

The Impact of Culture on the Creative Potential of American, Russian, and Iranian College Students

This study presents evidence for the impact of sociocultural environment on creative potential. The divergent thinking performance of American, Russian, and Iranian college students was compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. The study revealed that, compared to the Iranians, Americans and Russians have superior abilities to consider a problem from different perspectives and to generate original solutions to a problem. The performance differences on the originality measure of the representatives of the Western and Eastern countries calls for the possible revisions of the traditional definition of creativity as a construct emphasizing originality in thinking. Although originality and innovation are inherent properties of creative behavior in the Western thought, it might have lesser value in the East.

Creativity.4in1: Four-Criterion Construct of Creativity

The purpose of this theoretical article is to provide an extended definition of creativity that embraces potential cross-cultural variations in this construct. Creativity is defined as a 4-criterion construct, which includes attributes of novelty, utility, aesthetics, and authenticity. Novelty attribute stipulates that a creative work brings something new into being, which presents a new conceptual framework and/or modifies or violates an existing one. Utility attribute stipulates that a creative work is what a producer or a recipient considers creative, what represents an important landmark in spiritual, cultural, social, and/or political environment, and what addresses moral issues. The aesthetics attribute stipulates that a creative work presents the fundamental truth of nature, which is reflected in a perfect order, efficiently presents the essence of the phenomenal reality, and is satisfactorily complex, expressing both tension and intrinsic contradiction. Authenticity attribute stipulates that a creative work expresses an individuals inner self and relates ones own values and believes to the world. These attributes establish a comparison matrix, which can be used to evaluate and compare the levels of creativity of works from different areas of human endeavor.

The Role of Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Experiences in Bilinguals' Divergent Thinking

Research addressing the possible consequences of bilingualism for individuals’ creative abilities has revealed a contradiction between experimental findings of bilinguals’ superiority in creative tasks and real life observations of no significant relationship between being bilingual and being creative. This chapter makes an attempt to resolve this contradiction and investigates a possible effect that bilingualism might have on creative abilities. Three factors in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural experiences of bilingual individuals are examined: language proficiency, age of second language acquisition, and experience and participation in two cultures. The empirical study with Russian-English bilingual immigrants living in the United States and English monolingual native speakers revealed that cross-linguistic factors in bilinguals’ development had an influence on their divergent thinking abilities, which is a necessary component of creative thought. These findings suggest that although bilingualism may lay the foundation of creative thinking it does not necessarily imply being creative. To account for these findings, a cross-language transfer is proposed as a cognitive mechanism facilitating divergent thinking in bilinguals. A specific architecture of bilingual memory in which two lexicons are mutually linked to the shared conceptual system is theorized to facilitate the functioning of the cross-language transfer. The present study contributes to creativity research by examining the effect of bilingualism on creative thinking. It will start out with a brief survey of existing literature on the relationship between bilingualism and creativity and discuss an apparent contradiction therein. Although it is suggested that bilinguals show greater performance on creativity tests, we do not see outbursts of creativity among nationals of bilingual countries. To account for this contradiction, the studywill offer a perspective on the relationship between bilingualism and creativity, in which bilingualism facilitates divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is assumed as a necessary but not sufficient trait of creative behavior. Subsequently, it will present empirical findings indicating the factors in bilingual development that may contribute to bilinguals’ superiority in divergent thinking. The following discussion will outline a model of bilingual memory, whose structure is suggested to facilitate cognitive processes underlying this trait. It will specifically

The Role of Selective Attention in Bilingual Creativity

The study presents a systematic investigation of the cognitive mechanisms of selective attention that potentially mediate the effect of bilingualism on creative abilities. The performance of 90 bilingual college students with different proficiency levels in English was compared on a battery of creativity and cognitive measures. Linguistically advanced bilinguals demonstrated greater abilities to produce original and useful ideas and to think beyond standard categories in creative problem-solving. Two mechanisms of selective attention were identified as contributors to the improvement of bilingual creative abilities. The inhibition of irrelevant information seemed to enhance the capacity to produce original and useful ideas. The facilitation of relevant information was likely to boost the ability to activate a multitude of unrelated concepts and work through the concepts already activated. Bilinguals with different levels of linguistic skills were found to utilize these mechanisms differently and thereby to employ different strategies in creative problem-solving.

Sociocultural Differences in the Relationship Between Bilingualism and Creative Potential

The performances of Russian-English bilinguals and English monolinguals living in the United States, and Farsi-English bilinguals living in the United Arab Emirates and Farsi monolinguals living in Iran, were compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults to investigate whether the sociocultural context modulates the influence of bilingualism on an individual’s creativity. The findings revealed an interactive influence of bilingualism and sociocultural context on creative potential, suggesting that the contribution of bilingual development to creative potential differs across cultures.

Is Triangle Really Yellow? An Empirical Investigation of Kandinsky's Correspondence Theory

Kandinsky proposed a fundamental correspondence between primary colors and elementary forms: yellow – triangle, red – square, and blue – circle. This theory evoked a strong opposition among artists, design experts, and researchers. This theory was tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1 non-artist university students (N = 284) were directly asked about the color-form assignment using a modified version of Kandinskys questionnaire. The evidence did not support Kandinskys theory. Rather, their preferences for colored forms were guided by pragmatic associations. A sub-sample (N = 56) was further tested indirectly using a color-form priming technique, the evidence similarly not supporting Kandinskys theory. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 in another sample of non-artist university students (N = 60) using color/form recognition test. These findings are in line with earlier investigations which had employed survey methods to assess preference for colors and forms. Having presented a consistent pattern of results among the general population, eventually this theory must also be tested in a synesthetic population.

Perceptual Confusions of American-English Vowels and Consonants by Native Arabic Bilinguals.

This study investigated the perception of American-English (AE) vowels and consonants by young adults who were either (a) early Arabic-English bilinguals whose native language was Arabic or (b) native speakers of the English dialects spoken in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where both groups were studying. In a closed-set format, participants were asked to identify 12 AE vowels presented in /hVd/ context and 20 AE consonants (C) in three vocalic contexts: /ɑCɑ/, /iCi/, and /uCu/. Both native Arabic and native English groups demonstrated high accuracy in identification of vowels (70 and 80% correct, respectively) and consonants (94 and 95% correct, respectively). For both groups, the least-accurately identified vowels were /ɑ/, /ɔ/, /æ/, while most consonant errors were found for /ð/, which was most frequently confused with /v/. However, for both groups, identification of /ð/ was vocalic-context dependent, with most errors occurring in /iCi/ context and fewest errors occurring in /uCu/ context. Lack of significant group differences suggests that speech sound identification patterns, including phonetic context effects for /ð/, were influenced more by the local English dialects than by listeners’ Arabic language background. The findings also demonstrate consistent perceptual error patterns among listeners despite considerable variation in their native and second language dialectal backgrounds.

The effect of mood induction and language of testing on bilingual creativity

This study explores the hypothesis that language of testing and mood states can influence creativity in bilinguals. Arabic–English bilingual speakers were induced into positive or negative mood states using film clips and recall-of-events procedures. Then, participants’ creativity was assessed with the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. Participants were tested in either English or Arabic. A Picture Naming Test revealed English as participants’ stronger language and Arabic as their weaker language. Testing in English was found to enhance verbal fluency and originality, as compared to testing in Arabic. Most importantly, an interactive effect of induction (positive, negative) and language of testing (English, Arabic) on creativity emerged. The results revealed two conditions beneficial for participants’ nonverbal originality: a positive mood state when tested in English and a negative mood state when tested in Arabic. These results are discussed in light of the interactive effect of mood induction and linguistic context (stronger vs. weaker) on an individuals creativity.

Language Mediated Concept Activation in Bilingual Memory Facilitates Cognitive Flexibility

This is the first attempt of empirical investigation of language mediated concept activation (LMCA) in bilingual memory as a cognitive mechanism facilitating divergent thinking. Russian–English bilingual and Russian monolingual college students were tested on a battery of tests including among others Abbreviated Torrance Tests for Adults assessing divergent thinking traits and translingual priming (TLP) test assessing the LMCA. The latter was designed as a lexical decision priming test, in which a prime and a target were not related in Russian (language of testing), but were related through their translation equivalents in English (spoken only by bilinguals). Bilinguals outperformed their monolingual counterparts on divergent thinking trait of cognitive flexibility, and bilinguals’ performance on this trait could be explained by their TLP effect. Age of second language acquisition and proficiency in this language were found to relate to the TLP effect, and therefore were proposed to influence the directionality and strength of connections in bilingual memory.