Laboratory for Linguistic, Intercultural
and Creative Competencies

The value of the PICK program is that we modify the learning process without changing the existing curriculum. To do this, we use a holistic approach that takes into account not only the educational aspects related to the training program but also the psychology of a personality and the student’s socio-cultural environment. The uniqueness of our program lies in the fact that we have created a didactic system that combines methods from different fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics.

The project examines the interaction of linguistic and cultural factors in the formation of a person's creative abilities, as well as the role of cognitive mechanisms and personal qualities in this process.

The research is aimed at identifying factors caused by the use of several languages, the development of creative abilities, and intercultural competence, which together affect the formation of a systemic adaptation of personality in the modern world. Systemic adaptation refers to an individual's ability to form actively transformative connections with the environment, the ability to analyze current social and psychological situations, the ability to coordinate one’s behavior with the main goals, awareness of one’s capabilities in a given situation. As a result, data that will be obtained may show ways to form a mechanism of systemic adaptation through the development of language abilities, the actualization of creative potential, and the formation of intercultural competence.

What prevents you from speaking a foreign language? Do you know a lot of words and grammar of a foreign language, but are you embarrassed to speak it? Our research is designed to answer these questions and other questions related to language anxiety. Language anxiety is a feeling of anxiety and nervousness that occurs when learning a foreign language. People with this phobia not only have a fear of studying, but also avoid communicating with foreigners, traveling abroad, and also have difficulty using their existing knowledge of the foreign language. This study aims to identify cognitive, personal, and contextual factors that cause language anxiety, as well as to suggest ways to overcome it.

The purpose of this project is to test the hypothesis about the ability of code-switching to form the flexibility of thinking and, consequently, to develop creative abilities. The research is carried out within the framework of a new creative approach to the study of the problems of multilingualism and includes the development and testing methods and techniques for teaching a foreign language using code-switching in the classroom in a modern school.

Evaluation of Potential Creativity (EPoC) is a new tool that allows us to measure creative giftedness. It includes verbal and graphical subtests that measure elementary and secondary school students for two key modes of creative cognition — divergent research thinking and convergent integrative thinking. It is a comprehensive assessment tool that combines an approach to creativity by areas and ways of thinking, allowing to assess the profile of creative potential. The project is aimed at developing psychometric norms with Russian-speaking children.

Our interest in the problem of the connections between creativity, bilingualism, and metaphorical thinking is largely due to the fact that these three phenomena have not been studied together. These circumstances determine the novelty and scientific significance of the conducted research. The research’s main hypothesis is based on the assumption that bilinguals are more productive in metaphorical thinking, which is closely related to creativity than monolinguals. As part of the preparation of stimulus material for the diagnosis of the parameters of metaphorical thinking, the author's methodology for assessing the preferences of simple and complex metaphors has been developed and is currently being tested.