Li Wei

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Multilingualism, social cognition, and creativity

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

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• 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)

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Language mode of the bilingual speech production
(Grosjean, 1998)
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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.

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• 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.

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• 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).

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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.)

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• 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)

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• 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)

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

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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

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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

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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?

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The social Cognition of Habitual Codeswitchers

• A) Empathy
• B) Tolerance of Ambiguity
• with Jean-Marc Dewaele

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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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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)

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Effect of multilingualism on Tolerance of
AmbiguityF 2.33, p lt 0.041 eta2 0.006
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Effect of TA on self-reported frequency of
Code-switching (ANOVAs)
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EFFECT OF TA ON ATTITUDES TOWARD CODE-SWITCHING
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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!

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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.

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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.
• .

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• 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.

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• 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.

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ATTA Activity 2
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ATTA Activity 2
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ATTA Activity 3
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ATTA Activity 3
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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.

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• 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.

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• 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).

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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