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The Effect of Bilingualism Level on Creative Performance during Preadolescent Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2019

Agurne Sampedro  and
Javier Peña
Agurne Sampedro*
Affiliation:
Universidad de Deusto (Spain)
Javier Peña
Affiliation:
Universidad de Deusto (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Agurne Sampedro. Universidad de Deusto. Facultad de Psicología y Educación. Departamento de Fundamentos y Métodos de la Psicología. Avenida de las Universidades, 24, 48007 Bilbao (Spain). Telephone: +34–944139000. E-mail: a.sampedro@deusto.es
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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the performance of creativity tasks regarding different levels of bilingualism and school grade. The sample consisted of 224 preadolescent children from fifth and sixth grades resident in the Basque Country (Spain). Evaluation included verbal and figural creativity tasks, and a linguistic proficiency questionnaire. The sample was divided into three groups depending on the bilingualism level (low, medium, and high). Results showed on the one hand, a better performance in figural creativity in the high-level group compared to medium and low-level groups, F(2, 218) = 7.22, p = .001, Ƞ2p = .062. On the other hand, the high-level group performed better in verbal creativity compared to the medium level group, F(2, 218) = 4.22, p = .016, Ƞ2p = .037. Differences in creativity between the three levels of bilingualism were different depending on the school grade. Moreover, children from fifth grade had better results in figural creativity tasks, F(1, 218) = 6.75, p = .010, Ƞ2p = .030. These results suggest that level of bilingualism is related to performance in creativity, and concretely, that a high level of bilingualism is associated with a greater creativity, while a medium level of bilingualism is related to a worse creativity performance. These are relevant results for the educational field that point out the importance of acquiring good competence in both languages.

Keywords

bilingualismchildhoodcreativitypreadolescenceschool grade
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 22 , 2019 , E12
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2019 

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Footnotes

The authors thank all the participants and clinical clusters who were involved in the study. Agurne Sampedro was supported by a fellowship from the Fundación Tatiana Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno.

How to cite this article:

Sampedro, A., & Peña, J. (2019). The effect of bilingualism level on creative performance during preadolescent period. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 22. e12. Doi:10.1017/sjp.2019.17

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