Bicultural Effects on the Creative Potential of Chinese and French Children

Abstract

This study examined possible bicultural effects on creative potential of children in four groups of Chinese and French children in Hong Kong and Paris. An international battery of widely used divergent measures (Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests; WKCT) and newly constructed divergent-plus-integrative measures (Evaluation of Potential Creativity; EPoC) was established for assessment. Study 1 showed that most measures of WKCT and EPoC were reasonably high in reliability and they had expected correlations with the fluency scores of some subtests of Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Study 2 found some interestingly mixed bicultural effects favoring verbal divergent responses for French children and graphic integrative responses for Chinese children. Compared with Paris-French children, the bicultural Hong Kong-French children had significantly higher scores in figural fluency, figural flexibility, and figural uniqueness of WKCT (requiring only verbal divergent responses) but significantly lower scores in the graphic divergent-exploratory measure of EPoC. Compared with Hong Kong-Chinese children, the bicultural Paris-Chinese children had significantly higher scores in the graphic convergent-integrative measure of EPoC, but significantly lower scores in verbal fluency, verbal flexibility, figural fluency, figural flexibility, figural uniqueness, and figural unusualness of WKCT. Implications of the mixed bicultural effects in relation to the diverse creativity measures and children groups are discussed.

Acknowledgments

This research (RGC HKBU 242207) was funded by Research Grants Council of the University Grants Committee, Hong Kong and granted to Sing Lau, Ping Chung Cheung, Todd Lubart, and Toby Tong. Thanks to Anna Hui, Cola Ho, Vincent Ma, Nancy Lam, Michelle Shum, and Wing Ling Li for their participation in the Hong Kong part of this study, as well as Marion Bresse, Anne Marks and Martin Storme in the French part. Also, thanks to Henri Coulaud for his contribution to programming electronic versions of some creativity tasks.

Notes

Note. 1 = Verbal fluency; 2 = Verbal flexibility; 3 = Verbal uniqueness; 4 = Verbal unusualness; 5 = Figural fluency; 6 = Figural flexibility; 7 = Figural uniqueness; 8 = Figural unusualness; 9 = Verbal EPoC divergent-exploratory; 10 = Verbal EPoC convergent-integrative; 11 = Electronic graphic EPoC divergent-exploratory; 12 = Electronic graphic EPoC convergent-integrative; 13 = Paper-and-pencil Graphic EPoC divergent-exploratory; 14 = Paper-and-pencil Graphic EPoC convergent-integrative; 15 = TTCT-fluency.

^# p = .05. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Note. Vflu = Verbal fluency; Vflex = Verbal flexibility; Vuniq = Verbal uniqueness; Vunusl = Verbal unusualness; Fflu = Figural fluency; Fflex = Figural flexibility; Funiq = Figural uniqueness; Funusl = Figural unusualness. Values in parentheses are standard deviations.

**p < .01; ***p < .001.

Note. Values in parentheses are standard deviations.

**p < .01; ***p < .001.