Bilingualism and Divergent Thinking among Nigerian and Welsh School Children

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Abstract
This investigation was focussed on the relationship between bilingualism and creativity. It was hypothesized that since language and thought are intimately related, the bilingual person, because he has two linguistic vantage windows or corridors to the world of phenomena, would ceteris paribus have an advantage over the monoglot in that aspect (divergent style) of cognitive functioning sometimes labelled “creativity,” since he would presumably have a greater repertoire of cognitive cues, signs, meanings, and relationships to draw upon. To test this hypothesis, two samples of primary school pupils in Nigeria and Wales were selected to reflect broadly a bilingual/monoglot dichotomy (total N = 289 boys and girls aged 9–11 years). A battery of tests of verbal and nonverbal creativity, verbal intelligence, and language proficiency was then administered to those samples. Broad indices of social class and home language environment were also taken. It was found that bilingual children were significantly higher scorers in the verbal creativity tests than their monoglot counterparts, but that there was no significant difference between the two groups in the nonverbal creativity tests.

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