Bilingualism and creativity across development: Evidence from divergent thinking and convergent thinking

Yifan Zheng; Solange Denervaud; Stephanie Durrleman

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2022.1058803

Bilingualism and creativity across development: Evidence from divergent thinking and convergent thinking

Front Hum Neurosci. 2023 Jan 6:16:1058803. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.1058803. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yifan Zheng^{1

2}, Solange Denervaud³, Stephanie Durrleman¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Neuroscience and Movement Science, Faculty of Science and Medicine, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
² Department of Neurology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Treatment of Major Neurological Diseases, National Key Clinical Department and Key Discipline of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
³ Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland.

Abstract

Introduction: Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of creativity from bilingualism. Divergent thinking and convergent thinking are considered the two most important components of creativity. Various (although not all) studies have concluded that bilingual children outperform monolingual children in divergent thinking, however, no study on children or adolescents so far has explored the relation between bilingualism and convergent thinking, or the brain structural basis of interaction between bilingualism and creativity. This study aimed to explore the impact of bilingualism on both convergent and divergent thinking in children and adolescents based on neuropsychological assessments, and the possible structural basis of the effect of bilingualism on creativity by a whole-brain analysis of regional gray matter volume (rGMV) and cortical thickness in children and adolescents.

Methods: 92 healthy children and adolescents of age 4-18 were recruited from public or private schools in the French-speaking side of Switzerland. Demographic data of the participants were collected, including gender, age, pedagogy, usage of language, and parents' socioeconomic status. Most of the participants underwent the neuropsychological assessments of divergent thinking, convergent thinking, and fluid intelligence. Structural image data of 75 participants were analyzed. Both voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and surface-based morphometry (SBM) were processed, to perform the analyses of rGMV and cortical thickness respectively.

Results: The outcomes indicated that convergent thinking, but not divergent thinking benefits from bilingualism in children and adolescents. However, this bilingual advantage appears to weaken across development. Unexpectedly, no significant correlation between morphometry and bilingualism was found. Neither divergent thinking scores nor convergent thinking scores showed any significant correlation with rGMV. However, the whole brain SBM showed that the cortical thickness in the right supplementary motor area (SMA) was negatively correlated with convergent thinking scores, which suggested that the children and adolescents with higher convergent thinking abilities may have thinner, more mature, and more activated cortex in the right SMA.

Discussion: Bilingualism and cortical thinness in the right SMA might facilitate convergent thinking independently, by enhancing this selective ability.

Keywords: bilingualism; children and adolescents; convergent thinking; cortical thickness; divergent thinking; gray matter volume.

Grants and funding

SDe was supported by a grant from the Société Académique Vaudoise and the Prepared Adult Initiative. YZ was supported by China Scholarship Council (CSC) No. 202006385028. The Swiss National Science Foundation grant No. PR00P1_193104/1 awarded to SDu provided support for her collaboration on this study as well as for open-access publication.