Brain Signal Complexity and Creative Ability in Bilingual and Monolingual Children

Childhood bilingualism has long been associated with enhanced creative performance. The neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, however, have yet to be characterized. Research suggests bilingualism modifies neural networks for executive control. Such changes, which can be assessed with estimation of neural signal complexity, are thought to increase information processing capacity. We thus compared electroencephalographic signal complexity during a Go/No-Go task in bilingual and monolingual children aged 4 to 6, and correlated these complexity estimates with creative ability. Differences in EEG complexity were found in left centro-parietal and right frontal scalp regions. Complexity, however, did not correlate with children’s creative performance scores. Although our findings failed to explain the neural link between bilingualism and enhanced creativity, we did find evidence to support the notion that bilingualism during early childhood is associated with functional brain changes in areas related to executive functioning.