Divergent Thinking and Language Learning: A pilot study of the effect of creative context generation on word learning

Divergent thinking (DT) is the ability to generate diverse solutions to a problem. This type of problem solving helps analysts to engage in alternate analysis, that is, the ability to consider multiple hypotheses (Haarmann, Platt, Donavos, Fox, & Bowles, 2007). DT is cognitive skill that can be trained (for a review see Haarmann, O'Rourke, & Ragusa, 2013), including in analysts (Haarmann, George, Berens, Grunewald, & Freynik, 2012). Since DT ability is beneficial for analysis and can be trained, it would be of much interest to know whether engaging the same skill benefits language learning, in view of its importance for language analysts. Indeed CASL’s sponsor requested a pilot study to address this question.