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MULTILINGUALISM, SOCIAL COGNITION, AND CREATIVITY Li Wei Birkbeck College, University of London li.wei_at_bbk.ac.uk DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS OF THE SELECTIVE ATTENTION ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Li Wei


1
Multilingualism, social cognition, and creativity
  • Li Wei
  • Birkbeck College, University of London
  • li.wei_at_bbk.ac.uk

2
  • 2014 A control process model of codeswitching
    (with David Green). Language, Cognition and
    Neuroscience 29,4 499-511
  • 2014 The role of codeswitching in bilingual
    creativity and selective attention (with Anatoliy
    Kharkhurin). International Journal of Bilingual
    Education and Bilingualism. DOI
    10.1080/13670050.2014.884211
  • 2013 Is multilingualism linked to a higher
    tolerance of ambiguity? Bilingualism Language
    and Cognition. 16.1 231-240 (with Jean-Marc
    Dewaele)
  • 2012 Multilingualism, empathy and
    multicompetence. International Journal of
    Multilingualism 9.4 352-366 (with Jean-Marc
    Dewaele)

3
Language mode of the bilingual speech production
(Grosjean, 1998)
4
implications
  • (Some) Bilinguals can behave as if they were
    monolingual by using only one of the languages
    they know.
  • How do you tell whether a person is bilingual or
    not?
  • Ask the person directly whether she is bilingual.
  • The person introduces herself as bilingual.
  • Someone else introduces her as bilingual.
  • You hear the person speaking two or more
    languages with other people.
  • Only in D, we have evidence that the speaker is
    in fact bilingual.

5
  • Code-Switching is therefore a defining feature of
    being bilingual.
  • Yet, CS has received relatively little attention
    in cognitive psychology of bilingualism.
  • Most of the existing work is on
    differentiation/separation/deactivation.
  • (Some) Bilinguals can behave as if they were
    monolingual by using only one of the languages
    they know.
  • SOME, because there are different types of
    bilinguals. For some, separation is neither a
    possibility nor a need.

6
  • Experience - born into a multilingual
    family/community vs learning additional
    languages later in life living in a multilingual
    environment vs OLON/OLAT environment
  • Multilingual reality cf. bilinguals, few
    multilinguals separate languages all the time
    (Clyne and others).

7
Different types of cs
  • 1. Its absolutely scandalistic. (referring to
    a news story)
  • 2. Can you open the light?
  • 3. lama f?lik bj??e (referring to a cartoon
    character) (Khattab 2009 152)
  • (Arabic. when Flick comes, with Flick
    pronounced with an epenthetic vowel, as in
    Arabic)
  • 4. Girl 1 Dónde estás?
  • (Spanish.
    Where are you?)
  • Girl 2 Upstairs.
  • Girl 1 Dónde?
  • (Spanish.
    Where?)
  • Girl 2 En mi habitación.
  • (Spanish. In
    the bedroom.)

8
  • 5. Mother Nei sik muyt-ye a?
  • (Cantonese. What do you want
    to eat?)
  • Son (1.0) Just apples.
  • Mother Just /n/ just apples? Dimgai m sik
    yoghurt a?
  • (Cantonese. Why not have some
    yoghurt?)
  • 6. There was a guy, you know, que that he se
    montó got up. He started playing with congas,
    you know, and se montó y empezóa brincar got up
    and started to jump and all that shit.
    (Winford, 2003 105)
  • 7. Ngaw wei solve di problem
  • (Cantonese. I will that/those. I will solve
    that problem.)
  • 8. Tu peux me pick-up-er?
  • (French You can. Can you pick me up?)
    (Gardner-Chloros, 2009 97)

9
  • 9. I'm LAVing PANDELCAGEs.
  • (Danish. Make, pancake. I'm making pancakes.)
    (Petersen, 1988)
  • 10. I have cha de/-ed chulai
  • (de Chinese case marker. I have checked.)
  • Traditional de, simplified/de (de Chinese case
    marker)
  • 11. She asked me, nei ha m ha-ppy la? So I told
    her, ho m happy la.
  • (Cantonese. You NEG. PART. Very PART. Are you
    happy or not? Very unhappy.)
  • 12. Sho shenme ping!
  • (Mandarin. What. What shopping)

10
  • Different structural configurations
  • Different social motivations/purposes/contexts
  • Different cognitive mechanism (?)

11
Cognitive mechanisms of codeswitching
  • Cognitive control differentiation / separation
    / deactivation
  • Language switching and task switching
  • Executive systems (cognitive advantages)
  • Imaging research neural networks involved in
    language switching
  • Subject selection bilinguals vs monolinguals
    early vs late bilinguals high proficiency
    bilinguals vs low proficiency bilinguals

12
Cognitive consequences of bilingualism
  • Cognitive advantages of bilingualism (knowing
    more than one language)
  • Non-verbal domains / reaction time (Simon task)
  • Metalinguistic awareness
  • Selective attention
  • Creativity
  • High-proficiency bilinguals have better
    cognitive/executive control functions
  • Ability to separate languages (control/deactivatio
    n) is taken to be the key

13
Cognitive consequences of codeswitching
  • What happens to habitual/dense Codeswitchers who
    simply do not separate their languages?
  • Poor executive control? Does CS require More or
    Less control?
  • Poor metalinguistic awareness? Grammaticality and
    structural well-formedness.
  • Poor selective attention, therefore poor
    creativity?

14
The social Cognition of Habitual Codeswitchers
  • A) Empathy
  • B) Tolerance of Ambiguity
  • with Jean-Marc Dewaele

15
Empathy
  • Empathy - the ability to tune into how someone
    else is feeling, or what they might be thinking
    (Baron-Cohen Wheelwright, 2004, p. 193).
  • Empathy plays a crucial role in social
    interactions as it allows us to understand the
    intentions of others, predict their behaviour,
    and experience an emotion triggered by their
    emotion (p. 193).
  • Linguists working on CS often claim that
    multilinguals can collaboratively build sentences
    with elements from different languages.
  • Potential to test multilinguals Theory of Mind.
  • Cognitive empathy - the intellectual/imaginative
    apprehension of anothers mental state
  • Emotional empathy - an emotional response to .
    . . emotional responses of others (Lawrence,
    Shaw, Baker, Baron-Cohen, David, 2004, p. 911).
  • In SLA, learners with higher Cognitive Empathy
    has been shown to have better attainment, and
    vice versa.
  • Instrument Baron-Cohen and Wheelwrights (2004)
    Empathy Quotient questionnaire.

16
findings
  • A total of 2,158 multilinguals (1589 females, 457
    males) completed a language use questionnaire and
    the Baron-Cohen/Wheelwright EQ questionnaire,
    focusing on Cognitive Empathy.
  • Participants knowing more languages did not score
    higher on cognitive empathy than those knowing
    fewer knowing more languages alone does not
    enhance Cognitive Empathy.
  • Participants who use multiple languages more
    frequently scored significantly higher on
    cognitive empathy.
  • Participants who habitually codeswitch between
    multiple language showed a stronger effect on
    cognitive empathy than mere proficiency in
    multiple languages.
  • Separately Dewaele and others investigated CS and
    emotions.

17
Tolerance of Ambiguity
  • TA is tendency to perceive ambiguous situations
    as desirable (Budner 1962 29).
  • TA refers to the way an individual (or group)
    perceives and processes information about
    ambiguous situations when they are confronted by
    an array of unfamiliar, complex or incongruent
    cues (Furnham 1994 403)
  • gt correlated with Openness (behaviour wide
    interests, imaginative insightful, linked to
    activity in dorsolateral cortex considered
    primarily a cognitive trait) Rigidity
    (inflexibility, difficulty making transitions,
    adherence to set patterns, linked to deficit of
    the executive functions (frontal lobe).
  • In SLA, some studies have shown that good
    language learners are more tolerant of ambiguity,
    though it remains a controversial issue.

18
  • Multilingual Use questionnaire with 18 questions
    related to sociobiographical background,
    frequency of codeswitching and attitudes towards
    CS etc.
  • Adapted version of Hermans (2010) Tolerance of
    Ambiguity questionnaire
  • N 2158 (1589 females, 457 males)

19
Effect of multilingualism on Tolerance of
AmbiguityF 2.33, p lt 0.041 eta2 0.006
20
Effect of TA on self-reported frequency of
Code-switching (ANOVAs)
21
EFFECT OF TA ON ATTITUDES TOWARD CODE-SWITCHING
22
Results
  • Participants who know more languages score high
    on TA.
  • TA not linked to proficiency
  • TA not linked frequency of CS (!)
  • TA linked to attitudes towards CS - High TA less
    likely to view CS negatively or to be bothered by
    being different!

23
CS and selective attention, and creativity
  • with Anatoliy Kharkhurin
  • Kharkhurin - effect of speaking several languages
    on an individuals creative capacities.
  • Individuals who know many different languages
    have better/enhanced selective attention, i.e.
    control and separation
  • Selective attention is crucial to creativity,
    i.e. divergent thinking
  • Using the Stroop task, Kharkhurin revealed that
    bilinguals who are better at focusing on relevant
    information i.e. selective attention, tend to
    also activate a larger number of possible
    solutions to a problem (i.e., generative
    capacity).
  • It also revealed that bilinguals with high
    language skills may utilize the inhibition
    mechanism of selective attention to enhance the
    extraction of innovative and useful ideas (i.e.,
    innovative capacity) presumably by suppressing
    the interference of the ideas that fail to
    satisfy task requirements.
  • Kharkhurin, 2011, made a logical though
    speculative conclusion that habitual CS where
    multiple languages are simultaneously activated
    may hinder selective attention and therefore may
    have negative impact on creative performance.

24
CS and selective attention, and creativity
  • The performance of 166 multilingual college
    students in UAE (59 male and 107 female, all
    Arabic-English bilingual with various other
    languages) with different code-switching
    behaviors and attitudes was tested on a battery
    of creativity and cognitive measures.
  • Participants creative abilities were assessed
    using the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults
    (ATTA, Goff Torrance, 2002). It has three paper
    and pencil activities.
  • In Activity 1, participants were asked to suppose
    that they could walk on air or fly, and then to
    identify the troubles that they might encounter.
    This activity provided verbal fluency and
    originality scores.
  • In Activity 2, participants were presented with
    two abstract and incomplete figures and were
    asked to draw pictures with these figures and to
    attempt to make these pictures as unusual as
    possible. This activity provided figural fluency,
    originality, and elaboration scores.
  • In Activity 3, the participants were presented
    with a group of nine triangles arranged in a 3 x
    3 matrix and were asked to draw as many pictures
    or objects as they could using those triangles.
    This activity provided figural fluency,
    originality, elaboration, and flexibility scores.
  • .

25
  • ATTA offers four scores of fluency, originality,
    elaboration, and flexibility.
  • Fluency measures the ability to produce
    quantities of ideas, which are relevant to the
    task instructions. The sum of fluency scores in
    all three activities provided a fluency raw
    score.
  • Originality measures the ability to produce
    uncommon ideas, or ideas that are totally new or
    unique. The sum of originality scores in all
    three activities provided an originality raw
    score.
  • Elaboration measures the ability to embellish
    ideas with details. The sum of elaboration scores
    in Activities 2 and 3 provided an elaboration raw
    score.
  • Flexibility measures the ability to process
    information or objects in different ways, given
    the same stimulus. A flexibility raw score was
    obtained from Activity 3.
  • The raw scores for fluency, originality,
    elaboration, and flexibility obtained in the test
    were subsequently transformed into scaled
    norm-referenced scores by the recommended
    procedure (Goff Torrance, 2002) which took
    age-related norms into account.

26
  • Participants fluid intelligence (Gf) was
    assessed by a standard Culture Fair Intelligence
    Test battery (CFIT, Cattell, 1973), which uses
    nonverbal stimuli to assess intelligence in such
    a way that the influence of verbal fluency,
    culture, and educational level has the least
    effect possible.
  • Selective attention was assessed by a version of
    the standard Eriksen flanker task. Participants
    were first presented with a fixation cross for
    500 ms, which was immediately followed by a
    horizontal array of five equally sized and spaced
    arrows for 1700 ms. The array was 14.87 cm wide
    and 1.16 cm high. The stimuli were presented in
    black on white background using 19 flat monitor.
    Participants were instructed to attend to the
    central arrow and ignore the four flankers. They
    were to press the left key for a left facing
    central arrow and the right key for a right
    facing central arrow. The flanking arrows either
    all pointed in the same direction as the target
    arrow, or they all pointed in the opposite
    direction. The trials on which the flanking
    arrows pointed in the same direction as the
    target arrow were the congruent trials the
    trials in which they pointed in the opposite
    direction were the incongruent trials. Subjects
    received a total of 80 trials (40 congruent and
    40 incongruent ones) in a random order, requiring
    an equal number of left or right responses.

27
ATTA Activity 2
28
ATTA Activity 2
29
ATTA Activity 3
30
ATTA Activity 3
31
Results
  • The study revealed both effects code-switching
    was found to weaken an individuals selective
    attention, yet at the same time, it facilitated
    certain creative capacities and had no overall
    negative consequences for creativity.
  • Specifically, CS for special communication
    purposes was found to be detrimental for
    selective attention, but not for creativity.
  • On the other hand, CS induced by a particular
    emotional state and by a lack of specific
    vocabulary in a target language appeared to
    relate to increase in both generative and
    innovative capacities.

32
  • Participants who code switch to achieve special
    communicative effect revealed lower selective
    attention capacity. In these cases, they are
    likely to consider several alternatives in
    different languages to select a lexical entry
    that communicates their message in the best
    possible manner. The success of this process
    partially relies on the ability to keep the
    entries in several languages active.
  • Code switchers seem to be unlikely to focus on
    one language and suppress the other that is,
    they should be less readily involved in
    interference suppression. This explains the
    findings that individuals who code switch to
    achieve special communication effect might be
    less involved in habitual interference
    suppression and therefore showed poorer selective
    attention performance.

33
  • At the same time, this performance was not
    related to any impairment in creative
    functioning. Despite the fact that CS could be
    detrimental to selective attention, those
    individuals who code switch to say something
    unusual do not suffer from limited selective
    control. They may code switch to exercise their
    verbal creative capacity, which compensates for
    the lack of selective attention.
  • In an attempt to convey the message with special
    communication effects, they deliberately code
    switch to achieve an expressive and creative
    performance. This idea is supported by our
    finding of a clear tendency for bilinguals to
    code switch in order to convey a message better
    and with more precision. This finding is
    consistent with the arguments put forward by
    sociolinguists who suggest that one of the
    primary motivations for CS by bilingual speakers
    is to convey messages more effectively, often
    through reiteration and elaboration in different
    languages (e.g. Gumperz, 1982). Moreover, there
    is an argument that it is the contrast in
    language choice that is built by the act of CS
    rather than the directionality of language choice
    (e.g. Li, 2005).

34
Discussion of the findings of the selective
attention and creativity tests
  • When we talk about the relationship between CS
    and selective attention, we assume that
    bilinguals employ this capacity only to suppress
    one language while speaking the other. This may
    not be the case in the CS mode, as one still has
    to select elements from different languages and
    mix them in order to produce grammatical and
    meaningful utterances. It could be argued that
    habitual code-switchers exercise more selective
    control when they are engaged in CS, albeit at a
    much fine-grained level.
  • This consideration could explain the findings of
    no selective attention performance differences
    between participants who indicated that they code
    switch in a particular emotional state, to convey
    a message better, and due to the lack of a word
    in a target language and those who do not code
    switch for these reasons.

35
  • Definitely, the impact of CS on selective
    attention appears to have no negative
    consequences for ones creative capacity.
    Different CS conditions were found to be
    facilitatory for creative functioning, including
    both generative and innovative capacities.
  • In particular, emotion-triggered and
    culturally-specific concept/word-triggered CS
    results in higher scores in creative capacity
    measure.

36
Future research
  • CS, the defining characteristic behavior of
    bilingual speakers, has not been systematically
    studied in cognitive psycholinguistic research.
  • We have tried to investigate the consequence of
    codeswitching on social cognition of
    multilinguals, and the relationship between CS,
    selective attention and creativity, partly to
    counter the negative views of CS by educators and
    others.
  • Further research is required to examine other
    aspects of social cognition and how CS
    contributes to creativity does CS require more
    or less selective attention what cognitive
    mechanisms and psychological states may have an
    impact on the relationships between CS, selective
    attention and creativity, and different types of
    codeswitching (motivations, modalities).
  • A model of cognitive control of CS is needed,
    that does not focus exclusively on
    differentiation/separation/deactivation.
  • Moreover, individual variations need to be taken
    seriously and investigated systematically in
    psycholinguistics studies of CS, going beyond
    comparisons between monolinguals and
    bilingualism, recognizing the diversity and the
    ecology of different types of bilingual and
    multilingual language users.

37
  • 2014 A control process model of codeswitching
    (with David Green). Language, Cognition and
    Neuroscience 29,4 499-511 DOI10.1080/23273798.20
    14.882515
  • 2014 The role of codeswitching in bilingual
    creativity and selective attention (with Anatoliy
    Kharkhurin). International Journal of Bilingual
    Education and Bilingualism. DOI
    10.1080/13670050.2014.884211
  • 2013 Is multilingualism linked to a higher
    tolerance of ambiguity? Bilingualism Language
    and Cognition. 16.1 231-240 (with Jean-Marc
    Dewaele)
  • 2012 Multilingualism, empathy and
    multicompetence. International Journal of
    Multilingualism 9.4 352-366 (with Jean-Marc
    Dewaele)

38
Thank you
  • Li Wei
  • li.wei_at_bbk.ac.uk
  • Birkbeck College, University of London
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