Centre for Multilingualism

Michal Korenar (University of Reading): Bilingualism and creativity: The effects of bilingual experiences of interpreters and translators on cognitive control and creativity

The Multilingual Mind: lecture series on multilingualism across disciplines

15.12.2020

Tuesday, 17.00 - 18.30 (CET/UTC+01)

Zoom room: zoom.us/j/94531600895

Abstract

Mounting evidence suggests that bilinguals have a creative advantage compared to monolinguals. Creativity, that is the production of outcomes that are both original and useful, fuels scientific discovery, promotes societal development, and drives innovation. Evidence offering a possible explanation for the link between creativity and bilingualism comes largely from studies which investigate the effects of bilingualism on cognitive control (CC) —a set of mental processes that enable humans to control their behaviour to achieve goals. CC is thought to (i.) be enhanced in bilinguals due to persistent conflict in their minds from choosing between two competing linguistic alternatives, and to (ii.) play a prominent role in creative thinking. However, research on both cognitive control and creativity in bilinguals has yielded divergent results as not all the previous studies presented evidence that bilinguals hold an advantage in cognitive control (Paap et al., 2016) or creativity (Lange et al., 2020). Notably, studies on CC in bilinguals which considered bilingual experience-based factors such as age of acquisition, frequency and quality of switching between languages, or immersion in a bilingual environment, produced far more consistent results (Luk & Bialystok, 2013). A similar trend can be found in the literature on creativity in bilinguals, since code-switching practices (Kharkhurin & Wei, 2015), language proficiency (Hommel et al., 2011), or training in interpreting (Kim & Lim, 2019) impact on creativity. These results challenge the common assumption that bilinguals are more creative in general and highlight the need to consider individual bilingual experiences when investigating creativity in bilinguals. 

In the present project, I aim to throw new light on the relationship between bilingual experiences and creative thinking in a study among three groups of Czech-English bilinguals (n=114) who are expected to differ widely in terms of their bilingual experiences: interpreters (n = 29), translators (n = 37) and bilinguals without professional experience (n = 47). The participants completed two commonly used creativity tasks, a CC task, intelligence test, and questionnaires measuring participants’ length of exposure to both languages, the age of onset of language acquisition, language proficiency, immersion in bilingual language use, and engagement in code-switching. Such a wide range of measures of the bilingual experience constitutes an unprecedented opportunity to rigorously investigate the relationship between bilingualism and creative thinking. I will argue that interpreters and translators differ systematically from those who do not use two languages in their professional lives, and that differences in the bilingual experience of these groups impact on their performance on tasks measuring CC and creativity. This study therefore illustrates that the everyday life experience of bilinguals needs to be studied carefully in studies of CC and creativity. The talk concludes by presentation of future directions of this research, including the planned analyses of MRI data, and implications for studies on bilingualism and creativity in general.