The Relationship Between Bilingualism And Non-Verbal Creative Behavior Among Limited-English Proficient And Spanish-English Proficient Hispanic Girls Of Primary School Age (Cognitive Flexibility, Mexican)

This study investigated and compared the non-verbal creative behavior of Spanish-English Proficient (SEP) and Limited-English Proficient (LEP) girls as measured by the figural form of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT); and examined the relationships of non-verbal creative thinking and selected home environment variables, as measured by the Index of Home Educational Environment (IEE). A sample of 31 LEP and 30 SEP students was selected from a total population of 140 girls. The selection of the sample was done in two stages. Girls who did not score within one standard deviation of the mean for each age group on the Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration, were eliminated. The student\u27s linguistic grouping was refined by using the Toronto Tests of Receptive Vocabulary (English/Spanish). Stage two, involved the individual administration of the Bicultural Test of Non-Verbal Reasoning, and the administration of the TTCT, Figural Form A. Students who did not score within the average in non-verbal reasoning ability were eliminated from the study. Causal-comparative design was used in this study. The level of significance for rejecting the null hypotheses was set at .05. Statistical techniques used in this study were the one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, and the Pearson product-moment correlation. Statistical analysis indicated that neither the main effect of language group nor the interaction effect of home environment were generally significant. There was positive association between figural elaboration and two IEE variables for the SEP group, and figural fluency and five IEE variables for the LEP group. A clear pattern of higher SEP mean scores emerged from this study. This suggested (a) that bilingualism does not have a detrimental effect on non-verbal creativity, and (b) that the superior performance of the SEP group may begin to emerge at the elementary age level