On the Relationship between Bilingualism, Biculturalism and Creativity

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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.