Bilingual individuals are less creative when using their second language compared with their native tongue, according to new research from Turkey.
The study, published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, examined Turkish-English bilingual university students and found consistent advantages in creative performance when tasks were completed in Turkish, their first language, rather than English, their second language.
Researchers asked participants to complete two widely used creativity assessments: the Alternative Uses Task, which measures divergent thinking by asking participants to generate as many unusual uses as possible for everyday objects, and the Remote Associates Test, which measures convergent thinking by presenting three unrelated words and requiring a single connecting word. Participants produced more ideas, gave more original responses, and were better at identifying connections when working in Turkish.
The research forms part of Dr Gyulten Hyusein’s PhD dissertation at the Language and Cognition Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Koç University, conducted in collaboration with Professor Dr Tilbe Göksun.
To investigate why creativity differed between languages, researchers examined mental imagery. After each task, participants rated the vividness of the mental pictures they experienced while solving problems.
Imagery was significantly richer and clearer in Turkish. Across both languages, greater vividness strongly predicted better divergent thinking performance. This indicates that the ability to form vivid mental images supports creative idea generation and that the native language facilitates stronger visualisation.
However, for convergent thinking, higher gesture rates combined with vivid imagery predicted lower scores in both languages, suggesting that rich visual processing may sometimes hinder narrowing down to a single correct answer.
Spontaneous representational gestures during Turkish language were positively linked to better idea generation in divergent thinking tasks. In English, gesturing was negatively associated with performance.
Researchers propose that in a second language, gestures may compensate for verbal difficulties rather than stimulate new ideas.
Self-rated English proficiency did not correlate with richer mental imagery in English or fully explain the creativity differences. This suggests that fluency alone does not eliminate the gap. Instead, deeper factors such as emotional and sensory associations tied to the native language may shape creative cognition.
The study involved Turkish-English bilinguals completing verbal tasks in both languages and reporting imagery vividness. It builds on prior research showing reduced mental imagery in foreign languages while adding analysis of gestures and distinguishing between divergent and convergent thinking processes.
The findings suggest that language influences not only how ideas are expressed but how they are generated. While bilingualism is linked to cognitive benefits such as improved executive function, the results indicate potential trade-offs in creative performance depending on language context.
The implications may extend to education and professional settings. Encouraging use of the native language for brainstorming or recognising reduced imagery vividness in a second language may help mitigate these effects.