The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of being bilingual or monolingual using reliable measures of divergent and convergent thinking of creative performance. The results gave some support for the hypothesis that framing a creative problem in a verbal context would result in lower creative performance by bilinguals. However, no evidence was found to support bilinguals ‘advantages on the nonverbal creativity tasks.
The first aim of the study was to test the hypothesis that bilinguals show less verbal abilities than monolinguals. The results showed that monolinguals had a superior mastery of their vocabulary by an average of 14%, compared to their bilingual counterparts at 9.19%. The convergent thinking RAT task was administered to determine participants’ word knowledge and thereby comparing the language skills of bilinguals and monolinguals. The study used the English version of the RAT by Lee et, al., (2014). The bilingual sample had been inspected on proficiency levels in English and heritage participants had proficiency level. The poorer overall performance among bilinguals on the ability to complete the RAT-test successfully corroborates previous studies that suggested that bilinguals restricted on reading and writing skills were due to their linguistic status (Gollan et al., 2005). Generally, bilinguals perform better in tasks which involve different solutions instead of a single correct response to a question (Beardsmore, 2008).
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Simultaneously, those bilinguals who may have less experience in English should be at a disadvantage on the verbal activities as some of the participants didn’t know the meaning of some words as thus acquired L2 later in their life as concerns of arriving at an English country with lower fluency in English. Another important factor, context of acquisition, it is when participants have not been raised in the same cultural background as English/American ones. Here in the study participants that came from other non-English speaking countries showed difficulty in responding accurately, thus they didn’t have the correct association words in their knowledge to reach a correct association to link with the trial.
Several studies observed that problem-solving ability on Remote Associates Test (RAT) could be associated with WMC. Finding the correct solution to these problems requires questioning ones to experience knowledge in a quick and effective manner. In the present study the researcher had encouraged participants not to be worried to say aloud the first words that might come across to resolve the problem, those who communicated their first impressions had more chances to solve the problem, Aiello, Jarosz, Cushen, and Wiley (2012) suggested that this process of using “your guts” merely only works for monolingual solvers and their bilingual counterparts may need to appeal to their executive functions to succeed in performing a task, in these cases attentional control may be critical for reaching a solution. Chein et al., (2014) provided no evidence that supports this notion for verbal overshadowing of RAT performance across the groups. Participants search through their semantic knowledge, mostly using one constraint at a time, often, the most common words that first come to mind are not related to the other cue words, and that direct open-minded association will bring a belief that a solution will be materialized between search items. Therefore, recognizing the correct associate word, individuals need to suppress the strongest associates and search for ‘remote associates’ of the three cue words. Reallocation can take a sudden solution that sometimes comes with an insight-Aha experience (Chein et al., 2014). Therefore, an effective inhibitory function may be important when a solver needs to deal with fixation, to be distant from common concepts, in which word-field information provides the direction of an incorrect solution, which creates a problematic situation that involves one to think differently. Studies considered that mental impasse is a necessary condition for insight feelings occasioned with a long time thinking on a solution after having few incorrect retrievals, and later, seem with a sudden awareness on the correct response (Knoblich, Ohlsson, & Raney, 2001; Wen, Butler, & Koutstaal, 2013).
The convergent thinking RAT task and Aha-Experiences
Previous research on insight experience showed a disagreement concerning the particular processes underlying insight. From this research, a marker has been taken for insight into their response during the 15-sec time limit, when participants find a correct solution. Data showed a statistical difference in the strength of the correlation between time spent and aha insight experience; 79.21% by monolinguals and a 96.04% by bilinguals. The current findings showed that participants reported aha! Experience when they used less time on retrieval response, they gained the response quickly corresponded with greater insight. Our outcomes replicated findings as found in previous studies in the literature (Chein et al., 2014; Jung-Beeman et al., 2004; Kounios et al., 2006; Sandkühler, & Bhattacharya, 2008). Mednick suggested early responses are founded on a Memory strategy of retrieval from long term memory as automatic (Bowden, Jung-Beeman, Fleck, & Kounios, 2005; Sawyer, 2011). An average of insight feelings by monolinguals were 52.41 % and bilingual 34.67% correlated by a negative relationship, less time and more insight feelings. However, the results need to be considered with caution, we didn’t directly measure impasse and restructuring to generalize our results.
Examples on fixation-trial on the present study had presented Rat-13 (Dream /break /light), Rat-15 (Safety/cushion/point). Next, the current study come to an agreement with Lee et, al., (2014) on the level of difficulty of item RAT-30 (Piece - mind – dating; game) had only 2.3% of correct responses, and RAT-29 (nuclear/feud/album; family) by only 4.3 % of the correct response. These two items could be considered as a substitute in future studies. Followed by levels of difficulty Rat-20, Rat-10 and RAT-15, these four items were challenging for all participants, independently of what group conditions were imposed.
Group differences and the Creativity Test
Hence, overall, the condition to be monolingual or bilingual had no main effect on the divergent thinking tasks of creativity as measured by the- ATTA scores on Creativity Index. The results didn’t show any dissimilarities to confirm any meaningful outcome difference between groups, may have been produced by the lab-context condition of 3 minutes period to generate with success novel ideas is not enough time to come up with colourfulness or original ideas, it is short interval if we associated to real life creativity processes. Considering creativity as a multidimensional concept Cropley (2000) recommended that judgements must be based on several tests, rather than relying on a single score. Nonetheless, this result couldn’t replicate the positive results reported by Kharkhurin (2008, 20010, 2011) on group differences of divergent thinking. However, when the study assessing verbal and non-verbal indicators revealed a significant difference in verbal criterion among language group, the finding supported the hypothesis that bilinguals’ linguistic performance is poorer than the monolinguals’ one.
Limitations and future research
There are several limitations to this study. First, the study did not have a big sample size of diverse groups which compared bilinguals' creativity depending on their degree of bilingualism. Secondly, in the present study on RAT performances, we only considered a correct or incorrect answer, rather than bringing together intermediate responses during the search process. The answer words were not analysed. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is based on a statistical latent model for factor analysis of calculation data, which can distinguish between highly similar and dissimilar matches to a target word (Hofmann, 2017), how people combine constraints to search through and retrieve semantic information from memory. Further research might be of interest to focus on the search process rather than the final answer, to understand how individuals come up with such answers, and how close thoughts are to utter a correct response. As previous research supported the idea that bilinguals perform better in tasks which involve different solutions instead of a single correct response to a question (Beardsmore, 2008), LSA can offer advantages of digital databases to perceive how individuals activate mental networks. Another limitation of this study relates when comparing results with the Lee study, there is a need to be aware that the studies varied in language (American undergraduate students vs. Dutch university students) and from this research (multicultural background vs English in Ireland). Some of the words which identify as American style and might have negatively influenced negatively our participants to seek response such as RAT-2 (Cracker/fly/flight), RAT-3 (Duck/fold/dollar) these words could be considered for revision in future research.
Third, the ATTA is a complex measure and is complicated by the dependence of all scales on the same stimuli. Kim (2006; Kim, Cramond, & Bandalos, 2006-a) suggested that the structure of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (versions of children) scores stay reliable with a two-factor theory, which is linked to Innovative and Adaptive styles grounded on Kirton’s theory (1976, 1978, 1989). Future research might like to examine the latent structure of ATTA for adults to seeing different personality’s to approach in creativity levels such innovations as more prone to taking a risk doing things differently, seeking at improvement, or otherwise, as an adaptive preference to doing things well, create original ideas, which are suitable to the current norms. More studies are required, that would help to clarify some of the issues left unsolved in this study.
Conclusion
To determine if there was any difference between group conditions we look at levels of Creativity and language condition (monolingual and bilingual). The data showed no solid evidence to prove advantages in creativity levels. Understanding mental processes by creativity take a multidisciplinary dynamic, influenced and interacted on by their respond to environmental stimuli, subject by culture, with guidance thinking and cultural behaviours as dependent learning styles. Disregard of the complexity of bilingualism and creativity as a result of the research, we can summarize that bilinguals might be less fluent in either of their languages, not equally competent in both languages.
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