On the Relationship between Bilingualism, Biculturalism and Creativity

生活在多元文化中的认知会有什么后果？尽管这个话题在现代生活中很突出，但人们对多元文化主义知之甚少。一种假设是，生活在一种以上的文化中，说一种以上的语言，自然会带来一些好处。双文化和双语经历可能会鼓励发散性思维和认知灵活性，这两者共同促进创造性思维。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Arthur Reber博士和Anatoliy Kharkhurin硕士将探索这一工作假设。Kharkhurin先生将进行一项跨区域的发散思维研究，将生活在美国的俄英双语移民、一直并继续生活在俄罗斯的俄英双语移民，以及两种文化中的单语群体进行比较。更广泛的影响包括对文化多样性和双语的更好理解。此外，这项研究将在Kharkhurin先生博士论文的背景下进行，从而有助于他的研究生教育。

What are consequences for cognition of living in multiple cultures? Despite the salience of this topic for modern life, not much is known about multiculturalism. One hypothesis is that some benefits come naturally from living in more than one culture and speaking more than one language. Bicultural and bilingual experiences may encourage divergent thinking and cognitive flexibility, which together facilitate creative thought. With support from NSF, Dr. Arthur Reber and Anatoliy Kharkhurin, M.A., will explore this working hypothesis. Mr. Kharkhurin will conduct a cross-regional study of divergent thinking that compares Russian-English bilingual emigrants who live in the United States, Russian-English bilinguals who always have and continue to live in Russia, and monolingual groups in both cultures. Broader impacts include a better understanding of cultural diversity and bilingualism. Moreover this research will be conducted in the context of Mr. Kharkhurin's doctoral dissertation and thereby contributes to his graduate education.