Summary: Does switching to a second language dampen your creative spark? According to a new study, the answer is likely yes. Researchers found that bilingual individuals perform significantly better on both divergent (original idea generation) and convergent (problem-solving) creativity tests when using their native language.
The study reveals that native languages allow for much more vivid and rich mental imagery, which is the primary engine of creative thought. Surprisingly, even high proficiency in a second language doesn’t fully bridge this gap, suggesting that the sensory and emotional depth of a first language plays a fundamental role in how we “see” and solve problems.
Key Facts
- The Creativity Deficit: Bilingual students generated more ideas and more original responses in their native Turkish than in their second language, English.
- Mental Imagery is Key: Creative performance was directly linked to how vividly participants could “see” ideas in their minds. Native languages produced significantly clearer and richer mental images.
- Proficiency Paradox: Fluency in a second language did not necessarily result in more vivid mental imagery or higher creativity scores, suggesting a deeper emotional/sensory connection to the first language.
- The Gesture Signal: While hand gestures in a native language helped spark new ideas, gesturing in a second language was often a sign of “compensating” for lost words, which actually hindered creative flow.
- Cognitive Load: Thinking in a second language may drain cognitive resources that would otherwise be used for “out-of-the-box” thinking.
Source: Koc University
Most of us have experienced a moment when we couldn’t quite recall a word in another language: the idea is there in our minds, but we simply can’t find the expression for it.
The research, published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, is part of Dr. Gyulten Hyusein’s PhD dissertation research at the Language and Cognition Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Koç University, conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Tilbe Göksun.
It explores a question with clear everyday relevance: When bilingual individuals switch to their second language, does their creativity decline?
To find out, researchers asked Turkish-English bilingual university students to complete two classic creativity tests, one in Turkish (their native language) and one in English (their second language). The first test, the Alternative Uses Task, asked participants to come up with as many unusual uses for everyday objects as possible.
This measured divergent thinking, the ability to generate many original ideas. The second test, the Remote Associates Test, presented three seemingly unrelated words and asked participants to find a single word connecting them all, measuring convergent thinking, the ability to zero in on a correct solution.
The results were clear-cut: Participants were more creative in Turkish across the board. They generated more ideas, came up with more original responses, and were better at finding the connecting word. But the researchers wanted to understand why. And this is where the study gets particularly interesting.
One key factor turned out to be mental imagery. After each task, participants rated how vividly they had been picturing things in their minds while working through the problems. Those mental images were richer and clearer in Turkish than in English.
And the vividness of the mental images was strongly linked to better divergent thinking performance, regardless of which language was being used. In other words, the more vividly you can picture something, the more creative you tend to be. And, your native language seems to help you picture things more vividly.
The study also looked at hand gestures, the spontaneous movements we tend to make while we speak. Gesturing while talking in Turkish was gently linked to better creative idea generation, while gesturing in English was associated with worse performance.
One explanation is that in a second language, people may use their hands to compensate for what they cannot easily say, but the gestures end up substituting for ideas rather than generating them.
For convergent thinking, more gesturing combined with vivid imagery actually predicted lower scores in both languages, suggesting that rich visual thinking might sometimes get in the way of homing in on a single correct answer.
Perhaps the most surprising finding was that English proficiency, how well participants rated their own command of English, did not translate into richer mental imagery in English, nor did it explain the creativity gap on its own.
This suggests that creativity in a second language is not simply a matter of how fluent you are. Something deeper, connected to the emotional and sensory richness that our native language carries, seems to matter as well.
For the millions of people who work, study, and collaborate in a language that is not their first, these findings raise important practical questions. They suggest that the language we think in is not just a passive vehicle for expressing ideas: It actively shapes the very texture of those ideas.
Key Questions Answered:
A: Not necessarily “less creative” as a person, but you may have a harder time accessing your creative flow. The study suggests your native language is like a “high-definition” lens for your imagination, while a second language might feel a bit more like “standard definition.”
A: Surprisingly, the study found that high proficiency didn’t automatically close the creativity gap. It’s more about the emotional and sensory “hooks” that your first language has in your brain. To stay creative in a second language, you might need to intentionally visualize more.
A: In your native language, gestures help you “act out” and refine ideas. In a second language, your brain often uses gestures to fill in the gaps of missing vocabulary. The study found that this “compensatory” gesturing can actually block the generation of truly original thoughts.
Editorial Notes:
- This article was edited by a Neuroscience News editor.
- Journal paper reviewed in full.
- Additional context added by our staff.
About this language and creativity research news
Author: Hande Sarantopoulos
Source: Koc University
Contact: Hande Sarantopoulos – Koc University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Thinking creatively in two languages: Effects of mental imagery vividness, foreign language proficiency and hand gestures on bilingual creativity” by Gyulten Hyusein and Tilbe Göksun. Bilingualism, Language, and Cognition
DOI:10.1017/S1366728925100151
Abstract
Thinking creatively in two languages: Effects of mental imagery vividness, foreign language proficiency and hand gestures on bilingual creativity
This study investigated the influence of language context on creative thinking, mental imagery vividness and the use of representational hand gestures among Turkish-English bilinguals.
Participants solved verbal divergent and convergent thinking tasks in both their native (L1) and second languages (L2) and self-reported their mental imagery vividness during each task.
Results revealed that participants were more creative and experienced more vivid mental imagery in L1 compared to L2. Surprisingly, L2 proficiency was not associated with L2 imagery.
Gestures in L1 had a positive association, while gestures in L2 had a negative association with divergent thinking.
Higher gesture rates were related to lower convergent thinking performance in both languages, especially when imagery vividness was high.
These findings suggest that creativity and mental imagery vividness might depend on the language context. The role of gestures for verbal creativity might also differ according to the language used.
