The Effect of Bilingualism Level on Creative Performance during Preadolescent Period

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.