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1017/S1366728908003398
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11 (2), 2008, 225243
225
A NATO L I Y V. K H A R K H U R I N
American University of Sharjah
The study argues that, in addition to advantages in conscious attention-demanding processing, bilinguals may also exhibit
enhanced unconscious divergent thinking. To investigate this issue, the performance of RussianEnglish bilingual immigrants
and English monolingual native speakers was compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults, which is a traditional
assessment tool of divergent thinking. The study reveals bilinguals superiority on divergent thinking tasks that require the
ability to simultaneously activate and process multiple unrelated concepts from distant categories. Divergent thinking was
facilitated by bilinguals proficiency in two languages, the age of acquisition of these languages and the length of exposure to
the new cultural settings that accompanies the acquisition of a new language. 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
language mediated concept activation, thereby encouraging bilinguals divergent thinking performance.
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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
Table 1. Pearson Correlations for the Language Proficiency Measures ( N = 103).
.30
.61
.46
.57
.72
.52
.51
.64
.59
.78
231
Table 2. Mean Scores (with Standard Deviations in parentheses) on the Picture Naming and Self-Rating
Tests for Four Bilingual Language Proficiency Types ( N = 103).
High Proficiency
English Dominant
Russian Dominant
Low Proficiency
PNT English
PNT Russian
SSR English
SSR Russian
BBS
101.92 (6.88)
105.32 (5.75)
76.18 (11.85)
77.45 (12.05)
103.96 (6.60)
59.13 (13.72)
107.61 (6.32)
70.15 (18.78)
11.08 (1.95)
12.68 (1.47)
8.32 (1.74)
9.80 (1.94)
11.58 (2.89)
6.10 (2.39)
13.75 (.59)
10.40 (3.32)
.38 (1.06)
1.74 (1.18)
1.39 (1.10)
.10 (1.37)
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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
Factor loadings
II
.87
.88
.42
.26
.13
.17
.65
.82
1. Fluency
.63
2. Flexibility
3. Elaboration
4. Originality
.27
.16
.03
.22
.11
233
Figure 1. The average scores of bilingual and monolingual groups on four norm-referenced ATTA measures (N = 150).
.30
.49
.36
.61
.60
.62
.70
.52
.45
.76
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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
The term used in the original paper (Kharkhurin, in press) was crosslanguage transfer (CLT). It was substituted by the LMCA, because the
latter provides a more precise description of the nature of the process.
235
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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
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239
Education
Russia
Secondary school (put N/A if you didnt attend it)
How many years?
What other language(s) did you learn there? (check
appropriate)
English
German
French
Spanish
Other (specify)
Was it a special language school? (circle one)Yes | No
University (put N/A if you didnt attend it)
What was the name of the University?
How many years?
What other language(s) did you learn there? (check
appropriate)
English
German
French
Spanish
Other (specify)
Did you take an advanced language class? (circle one)
Yes | No
USA
High school (put N/A if you didnt attend it)
What was the name of the school?
How many years?
What other language(s) did you learn there? (check
appropriate)
English
German
French
Spanish
Other (specify)
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Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
not at all
fair
well
very well
not at all
fair
well
very well
strong
moderate
not at all
fair
well
very well
not at all
fair
well
very well
not at all
fair
well
very well
not at all
fair
well
very well
strong
no accent at
all (like
American)
Russian
moderate
no accent at
all
Standard scores
Did you take the TOEFL? (circle one) Yes | No
if YES, what was your score (computer/paper based)?
Did you take the SAT? (circle one) Yes | No
if YES, what was your verbal English score?
Self-rating
In the questions 1 through 10, circle the word or a phrase
that applies to you.
English
How well do you
understand spoken
English?
How well do you
speak English?
fair
well
very well
not at all
fair
well
very well
References
Albert, M. L. & Obler, L. K. (1978). The bilingual
brain: Neuropsychological and neurolinguistic aspects of
bilingualism. New York: Academic Press.
Altarriba, J. & Basnight-Brown, D. M. (2007). Methodological
considerations in performing semantic and translation
priming experiments across languages. Behavior Research
Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 39 (1), 118.
Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A
componential conceptualization. Journal of Personality &
Social Psychology, 45 (2), 357376.
Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context: Update to The
social psychology of creativity. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Baer, J. (1993). Divergent thinking and creativity: A task-specific
approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bialystok, E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels of
linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology, 24 (4),
560567.
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