Abstract
Creativity, that is the production of outcomes that are both original and useful (Simonton, 2008), is a process demanding fluency, flexibility, novelty, and elaboration. These abilities require a.o. attention control mechanisms (Silvia, 2015).
Some of these cognitive functions have been argued to be components of a cognitive mechanism which is trained during code-switching, resulting in advantage for bilinguals in creative performance (Kharkurin & Wei, 2015). However, evidence that habitual code-switching may enhance creative performance is subject to controversy.
Therefore, the current study aims to expand on our knowledge regarding the link between code-switching, cognitive control and creativity by investigating four different groups: late Czech-English bilinguals living in Czechia and the UK and monolinguals living in these countries. Besides offline tasks commonly used to assess creativity and cognitive control (e.g. the Torrance Test of Creativity or the Flanker task), alternative approaches to the measurement of creativity will be included, such as subtests commonly used to measure intelligence.
A review of recent research in the field suggests that several subtests of intelligence batteries can be used as psychometric tools to measure creativity. The presentation will be concluded with a discussion of the experimental design I plan to use in my research.