The Effect of L2 Proficiency on Bilinguals’ Creative Idea Generation in the Alternative Uses Task: A Statistical Analysis

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jhet.202615315

Author(s)

Qing He

Affiliation(s)

Xi'an Mingde Institute of Technology, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China

Abstract

In psychology research, idea generation is one of the most popular ways to measure divergent thinking. Extensive studies have explored the association between bilingualism and creative thinking and have confirmed the superiority of bilinguals in creative performance. However, only a few studies used the alternative uses task (AUT) to measure bilinguals’ creative idea generation. To fulfill this research gap, the current study used AUT to test whether second language proficiency (L2 proficiency) has a positive influence on bilinguals’ creativity using standard regression analyses. The study has found that bilinguals with higher L2 proficiency generally outperformed those with lower L2 proficiency in AUT. The results suggested that there was a positive relationship between L2 proficiency and bilinguals’ creative idea generation. Specifically, L2 proficiency could explain originality, accounting for 15.8% of the variance, followed by fluency (10.4%). However, there was no significant association between L2 proficiency and flexibility. The current study is conducive to understanding the influencing factors of bilinguals’ creative thinking in a more comprehensive way. Moreover, it may also provide some important implications for L2 education.

Keywords

L2 Proficiency; The Alternative Uses Task; Bilinguals; Creative Idea Generation; Divergent Thinking

References

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