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Abstract
Among the various non-European or White ethnic minority groups in America (e.g.,African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and American Indians), Asian American stu-dents have been described as the model minority whose members achieve great academicsuccess, especially in math and science and present few problems in the classroom. Based onthis stereotypical image of Asian American students, educators have thought that they do notrequire any special supports from the schools. This popular stereotype of Asian Americanshas caused people to ignore the real multitalents of Asian American, including creativity.Creativity can be conceptualized as a process of perceiving new relationships and newchallenges through interactions between the creative individual and his or her environment,including the culture or language use. Thus, bilingualism may affect a bilinguals creativity.Because many Asian Americans are bilinguals, the emphasis on creativity may be especiallypertinent for this group.In this study, the relationship between the degree of bilingualism and creativity andgender and age effects on the relationship was investigated with 116 Korean American stu-dents at Atlanta Korean American school. Three different tests were used to measure par-ticipants bilingualism and creativity, including the Word Association Test and Subject SelfRating for bilingualism and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking for creativity. The scoresof bilingualism measures were compared with those of creativity measures to investigate therelationship between the degree of bilingualism and creativity.This study found that the degree of bilingualism and creativity were positively asso-ciated with each other regardless of participants gender and ages. The positive relationshipwas found across genders, but age was an influential factor on neither creativity nor bilin-gualism. This study also found a significant relationship between the degree of bilingualismand Adaptive creative style. Finally, this study confirmed a positive relationship between thedegree of bilingualism and Abstractness of Titles and Creative Strengths among six separatecreative abilities on the TTCT. However, significant language group differences includingmonolinguals, non-balanced bilinguals, and balanced bilinguals were not found in this study.