Multilingualism and Creativity

Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847697974
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In this monograph, Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin presents the results of his empirical investigation into the impact of multilingual practice on an individual's creative potential. Until now, the relationship between these two activities has received little attention in the academic community. The book makes an attempt to resuscitate this theme and provides a solid theoretical framework supported by contemporary empirical research conducted in a variety of geographic, linguistic, and sociocultural locations. This study demonstrates that several factors - such as the multilinguals' age of language acquisition, proficiency in these languages and experience with cultural settings in which these languages were acquired - have a positive impact on selective attention and language mediated concept activation mechanisms. Together, these facilitate generative and innovative capacities of creative thinking. This book will be of great interest not only to scholars in the fields of multilingualism and creativity, but also to educators and all those interested in enhancing foreign language learning and fostering creativity.

1 Creative Cognition

Overview

Throughout the history of human civilization, numerous attempts to understand human creativity have been made. The interest in human creative capacity never ceased, and contemporary creativity researchers are still arguing about the definition of creativity. There is a long-standing debate in the creativity literature whether the capacity for creative thought is limited to a certain class of gifted or ‘especially’ talented people or is available to the general population. The former view considers creative people as a minority who are capable of genuine creative thinking, and thus creativity has little bearing on the everyday cognitive activities of the general population. In this view, geniuses use cognitive processes that are radically different from those employed by most individuals in everyday problem solving. In contrast, the latter, creative cognition approach argues against the notion that extraordinary forms of creativity are the products of mysterious and unobservable processing. It advocates belief in the continuity of cognitive functioning between mundane and creative performance.

This chapter introduces creative cognition approach as a research paradigm of the relationship between multilingualism and creativity. The focus of creative cognition is not on personality traits that characterize a creative individual, not on characteristics of a product that indentify it
as creative; the focus is on the cognitive processes and functions that underlie creative thinking. The creative cognition assumes that both eminent creative accomplishments such as Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square or Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and mundane creative performances such as a new cooking recipe or a new decoration for the Christmas tree draw on the same thinking processes. The difference constitutes the variations in the use of specifiable processes or combinations of processes. According to this paradigm, if creative thinking constitutes specific processes, it can be studied by analyzing these processes.

Following one of the earliest models in creativity research, creative thinking is assumed as a stage process. A creative thought undergoes certain stages during which a problem is identified, elaborated on and evaluated to produce a creative outcome. For example, a writer conceives a literary work. He defines a problem in terms of a genre such as an essay, a romance or a novel, a topic such as historical, philosophical or detective story, a time period, main characters and so on. Furthermore, the author elaborates on the problem. He develops a plot line, personalities of his characters, dialogues and so on. During this phase, the author may stumble and even experience the writer’s block, which would require hanging up the problem for a while and occupying oneself with other problems and thoughts. Eventually, a solution to the problem emerges without any conscious effort and the author successfully completes his work. Then, the solution to the problem needs to be evaluated and refined, so the author goes over several drafts to produce a final draft.

What are the underlying mechanisms triggering creative thought? The information processing models of creative thinking perceive this process as information flow that carries creative idea from one stage to the next. Various ideas are represented in the form of mental or conceptual representations that are organized in the conceptual networks. For example, if one thinks about a bird signing perched on a tree branch, the conceptual representations of a bird, a tree branch and signing are activated simultaneously along with other representations, which are associated with the singing bird such as sky and melody. Thus, thinking process involves simultaneous activation of various conceptual representations thereby establishing connections between different concepts. Creative thinking process is characterized by ability to establish distant associations that link concepts from distant categories, more distant than the ones activated during noncreative thinking. In the example of the singing bird, creative thought may trigger activation of remote associations such as freedom and loneliness. That is, an image of the signing bird may signify a free spirit or symbolize a lonely soul.

The ability to establish distant associations constitutes a key mechanism of divergent thinking, which is perceived by many researchers as one of the major components of creativity. The ideas in creative mind diverge to activate a multitude of creative solutions to a problem. One may think of a plowman scattering seeds in the soil. Some of these seeds will dry up, but the other will sprout up. Similarly, not all solutions generated during divergent thinking may lead to a creative solution, but a larger pool of ideas generated during this process may result in a better creative problem solving. The solutions generated during divergent thinking are subsequently evaluated during convergent thinking, which narrows all possible alternatives down to a single creative solution. Continuing the plowman metaphor, when the seeds sprout up one gathers the best harvest. Therefore, creative cognition tradition assumes creative thinking as an ability to initiate multiple cycles of divergent and convergent thinking, which result in creative outcome.

This chapter discusses creative cognition and models of creativity constructed within this paradigm.

Cognitive Paradigm in Creativity Research: Creative Cognition

The conceptual framework of creative cognition rests on two major assumptions. First, it adopts a common view (e.g. Martindale, 1989; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995) that characterizes creative products as novel (i.e. original or unexpected) and appropriate (i.e. useful or meeting task constraints). Second, ‘ideas and tangible products that are novel and useful are assumed to emerge from the application of ordinary, fundamental cognitive processes to existing knowledge structures’ (Ward, 2007: 28). Creative capacity, therefore, is assumed as an essential property of normative human cognition (Ward
et al., 1999).

This perspective can be illustrated with examples of creative involvement in ordinary human activity. Beyond the obvious examples of artistic, scientific, and technological advancement that are usually listed as instances of creativity, there is the subtler, but equally compelling generativity associated with everyday thought. One of the most striking examples of generativity is the productivity of language: we are able to construct an infinite number of grammatical sentences using a limited number of words and a small set of rules (Chomsky, 1972). The generated sentences can be unique both to an individual’s linguistic practice and to the common practice of a given language. In line with creative cognition premises, the generativity goes beyond everyday human cognition and satisfies the criteria of creative products: novelty and utility. This example illustrates that everyday human activity may rely on processes that can be considered as those underlying creative thinking. However, there is no doubt about the existence of individual differences in creativity. Some individuals produce more creative outcomes than others, and a limited few achieve extreme levels of accomplishment (Eysenck, 1995). Although the creative cognition approach admits these differences, they can be understood in terms of variations in the use of specifiable processes or combinations of processes, the intensity of application of such processes and the richness and flexibility of stored cognitive structures to which the processes are applied (Ward et al., 1997). In other words, an individual’s creative involvement can be stipulated by known and observable fundamental cognitive principles such as the capacity of one’s memory systems (e.g. working memory), memory retrieval, mapping of old knowledge onto novel situations, conceptual structures, and knowledge combination and manipulation. This suggests that different individuals would demonstrate different creative abilities due to variation in their cognition. This variation though seems to be of quantitative rather than of qualitative nature. That is, the difference between creative endeavors of Albert Einstein and a housewife is determined not by the distinct nature of employed processes, but by the quantity of the same processes.

The methodological application of creative cognition paradigm constitutes a psychometric approach in which creativity can be investigated using conventional tools of experimental psychology. If creative thinking relies on the same processes as mundane thinking, we can study the former using the same methods as we employ in studying the latter. In this framework, creative thinking is perceived as a complex and versatile construct that may be effectively studied by examining the variety of processes and functions involved in a creative work (Guilford, 1950). They include but are not limited to problem definition and redefinition, divergent and convergent thinking, synthesis, reorganization, analysis and evaluation.

Cognitive Models of Creativity

One of the most influential models that identified different levels of creative processing was Wallas’s (1926) four-stage model formulated on the ground of introspective reports provided by eminent people (see Lubart, 2000, for an overview). As Torrance (1988: 45) noted, ‘One can detect the “Wallas process” as the basis for almost all of the systematic, disciplined methods of training in existence throughout the world today.’ In his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, Guilford (1950: 451) also emphasized that ‘there is considerable agreement that the complete creative act involves four important steps.’ These steps are preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. In preparation stage, the creative problem is consciously represented. A creative thinker has to identify the problem, define it in the appropriate terms and make necessary observations and studies. During incubation, the thinker hangs up the problem for a while and occupies him- or herself with other problems and thoughts. In this stage, conscious attention turns away from the problem and gives way to unconscious processing. The incubation is followed by illumination, which corresponds to an ‘Aha!’ effect when a solution to the problem finally emerges without any conscious effort. The transformation of the unconsciously formulated creative solution into the consciousness takes place during verification, when this solution needs to be tested and refined.

Some relatively recent empirical work draws clearly on the four-stage model and some contemporary models of creative thinking incorporate some aspects of the basic four-stage model. However, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that this model oversimplifies the multifaceted construct of creativity. For example, Eindhoven and Vinacke (1952) asked artists and nonartists to produce a picture that illustrated a poem presented at the beginning of the study. Indices such as the amount of time spent reading the poem, time spent formulating the initial picture and the number of different sketches made were noted. This study reported no evidence supporting four discrete stages in the creative process; rather the creative performance was described as an integrated work of different processes that cooccur in a recursive way throughout the course of creative thinking.

This more complex integrated view of creativity has been discussed in a number of other studies. Based on an analysis of interviews of fiction writers, Doyle (1998) described the creative process of writing fiction as beginning with a ‘seed incident’ that interests or provokes an author, which is followed by ‘navigating’ between different ‘spheres of experience’ to develop a story (e.g. moving between a fictional sphere, the written work and a revising mode). The interviews with artists conducted by Calwelti et al.
(1992) revealed evidence for the combination of different processes such as centering on a topic, working on new ideas, expanding ideas, evaluating, and taking distance from one’s work. Israeli (1962, 1981) studied creative process in art through introspection, interviews, observations and examinations of sketchbooks and finished works. He found that the creative process involves a series of high-speed short interactions between productive and critical modes of thinking, as well as planning and compensatory actions. In Getzels and Csikszentmihályi’s (1976) seminal study of art students making a still-life drawing, activities involved in formulating or defining the artistic problem were observed both in the predrawing phase and the drawing production phase. The researchers noted, ‘In a creative process, stages of problem definition and problem solution need not be compartmentalized’ (Getzels & Csikszentmihályi: 90). Finally, Goldschmidt (1991) formulated an overall conceptual framework of an architectural design as a result of protocol analysis of the sketching process in architectural designers. In this framework, new designs were formed in parts with deletions, transformations, a dialectic movement between general design qualities and issues in the specific task and moments of active sketching mixed with moments of contemplation.

Thus, the analysis of creative thought in terms of four distinct stages has been criticized for a lack of detailed description of the underlying processes. As Guilford (1950: 451) pointed out in his presidential address, ‘Such an analysis is very superficial from the psychological point of view. It is more dramatic than it is suggestive of testable hypotheses. It tells us almost nothing about the mental operations that actually occur.’ He has encouraged psychologists to conduct a systematic empirical study of the processes involved in creative thinking.

During the past 60 years since his speech, a large number of studies explored the nature of the processes involved in creativity, and a substantial class of models was proposed to describe them. However, in spite of quantitative diversity most of these models seem to focus on similar kinds of processing. For example, Rothenberg (1996: 207) describes Janusian thinking as ability for ‘actively conceiving multiple opposites or antitheses simultaneously.’ This concept is similar to another Rothenberg’s (1979: 7) idea of homospatial thinking that ‘consists of actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities.’ At the same time, Koestler (1968: 183) introduced the concept of bisociation, which he defined as ability for ‘combining two hitherto unrelated cognitive matrices in such a way that a new level is added to the hierarchy, which contains the previously separate structures as its members.’ Another model talked about remote associations – an ability of creative individuals to build connections between unrelated ideas or objects (Mednick, 1962). The primary concern of these models is with information synthesis or combination. They all converge on the idea of the simultaneous activation and manipulation of different, often unrelated concepts and categories. These activated instances create a new conceptual plane on which the original and novel ideas might be established. In other words, an important property of creative thinking constitutes working with mental elements that would not be engaged during noncreative thinking. An instance of noncreative thinking describes a rose as thorn plant with short life cycle. Another instance of noncreative thinking presents an individual with sorrowful life as the one whose aggressive behavior intends to protect against intrusion from the outer world. Now, these two instances produced by let’s say, a gardener and a psychologist, respectively, can be combined by a poet in a line of creative thought. This line considers the thorns of a rose as a protective personality trait and makes a link between two unrelated instances: a rose and a sorr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Dedication
• 1 Creative Cognition
• 2 Multilingual Cognition
• 3 Multilingual Creativity
• 4 Multilingual Creative Cognition
• 5 Multilingual Creative Development
• 6 Implications of Multilingual Creative Cognition for Creativity Domains
• 7 Implications of Multilingual Creative Cognition for Education
• 8 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Appendix A: Internet-Based Multilingual and Multicultural Experience Questionnaire
• Appendix B: Internet-Based Picture Naming Test
• Index