Bilingual verbal and nonverbal creative behavior

Abstract

The study investigates whether bilingualism has a measurable contribution to verbal and nonverbal creative performance. The performance of Russian-English bilingual and English monolingual college students residing in the USA was compared on the verbal and nonverbal indicators of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. The results demonstrated a bilingual advantage in nonverbal creativity and a monolingual advantage in verbal creativity. These findings contribute to the discussion of domain specificity of bilingual cognitive abilities with regard to creative thinking. © 2010 the Author.