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Abstract Recent works suggest that striking a balance between maximizing idea stimulation and minimizing idea redundancy can elevate novel idea generation performances in self-organizing social networks. We explore whether dispersing the visibility of high-performing idea generators can help achieve such a trade-off. We employ popularity signals (follower counts) of participants as an external source of variation in network structures, which we control across four conditions in a randomized setting. We observe that popularity signals influence inspiration-seeking ties, partly by biasing people’s perception of their peers’ novel idea-generation performances. Networks that partially disperse the top ideators’ visibility using this external signal show reduced idea redundancy and elevated idea-generation performances. However, extreme dispersal leads to inferior performances by narrowing the range of idea stimulation. Our work holds future-of-work implications for elevating idea generation performances of people. 

A key question in studies of cognitive development is whether bilingual environments impact higher-cognitive functions. Inconclusive evidence in search of a “bilingual cognitive advantage” has sparked debates on the reliability of these findings. Few studies with infants have examined this question, but most of them include small samples. The current study presents evidence from a large sample of 6- and 10-month-old monolingual- and bilingual-exposed infants (N=152), which includes a longitudinal subset (n=31), who completed a cueing attentional orienting task. The results suggest bilingual infants showed significant developmental gains in latency performance during the condition that was most cognitively demanding (Incongruent). The results also revealed bilingual infants’ performance was associated with their parents’ dual-language switching behavior. Taken together, these results provide support that bilingual experiences (i.e., dual-language mixing) influence infants’ shifting and orienting of attention. 

A bilingual environment is associated with changes in the brain's structure and function. Some suggest that bilingualism also improves higher‐cognitive functions in infants as young as 6‐months, yet whether this effect is associated with changes in the infant brain remains unknown. In the present study, we measured brain activity using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy in monolingual‐ and bilingual‐raised 6‐ and 10‐month‐old infants. Infants completed an orienting attention task, in which a cue was presented prior to an object appearing on the same (Valid) or opposite (Invalid) side of a display. Task performance did not differ between the groups but neural activity did. At 6‐months, both groups showed greater activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in frontal regions (left hemisphere for bilinguals, right hemisphere for monolinguals). At 10‐months, bilinguals showed greater activity for Invalid (> Valid) trials in bilateral frontal regions, while monolinguals showed greater brain activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in left frontal regions. Bilinguals’ brain activity trended with their parents’ reporting of dual‐language mixing when speaking to their child. These findings are the first to indicate how early (dual) language experience can alter the cortical organization underlying broader, non‐linguistic cognitive functions during the first year of life.