DiscussionDoes using a foreign language reduce mental imagery?
Introduction
Are our mental images less vivid when speaking a foreign language than when speaking our native tongue? For many models of how words are linked to conceptual representations the answer should be no, because bilinguals will access a common semantic system in both of their languages (e.g., Caramazza & Brones, 1980; Francis, 1999; Illes et al., 1999; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Paradis, 2004), which in turn should lead to common imagery processes. Yet, in a thought-provoking paper recently published in Cognition, Hayakawa and Keysar (2018, henceforth HK18) suggest the answer to be yes. Based on the results of two experiments (their experiments 1 and 2), HK18 conclude that visual imagery is reduced in a foreign language compared to the native language. In a final experiment, HK18 test whether reduced visual imagery might partially explain the foreign language effect in moral decision making (Costa et al., 2014). Here we focus on their central proposal: If you are a native speaker of English, the word “window” will evoke a clearer, more vivid mental image of a window than its Spanish counterpart ventana, even if you speak Spanish and you know perfectly well that ventana means window. We argue that this conclusion does not follow from the findings presented by HK18. Instead, their results are better explained by reduced language comprehension in a foreign language.
But why should mental imagery be reduced in a foreign language in the first place? The explanation advanced by HK18 is that vividness of imagery depends on the amount of sensory memories associated with a word and how easy it is to access these memories. The typical foreign language speaker has interacted with the world through their native language to a far greater extent than through their foreign language. There is evidence that memories are richer and better recalled when the language used at retrieval matches the linguistic environment at encoding (Marian & Fausey, 2006; Marian & Neisser, 2000). In combination with the well-established view that the episodic memory system is used for simulation of hypothetical events (Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2007), this makes it plausible that imagery is reduced in L2: To the extent that less detailed memories are triggered by a foreign word (ventana) than by its native counterpart (window), the image we form in the mind's eye could be less vivid, even though we may fully grasp the meaning of ventana. We find this line of explanation compelling. However, for this argument it is crucial that 1) participants understand the meaning of the words in the foreign language and 2) the paradigm tests mental imagery.
Section snippets
Experiment 1 has problems that extend to experiment 3
In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate on a 7-point scale the vividness of a range of sensory experiences from different modalities (visual, auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, gustatory, olfactory, organic). Imagery of sensory experiences was always triggered by a verbal description.1
Experiment 2: Limited understanding of words in the foreign language will impair the shape task more than the category task
In contrast to Experiment 1, HK18 present Experiment 2 as an “objective behavioral measure to investigate the vividness of mental imagery” (p. 12). Participants were native Mandarin speakers with English as a foreign language. The basic task involved one of two versions of an odd-one-out paradigm: In each trial, participants saw groups of three words (e.g., violin, piano and hourglass) and were asked “to click on the one that was least like the other two based on a given attribute” (HK18, p.
Looking forward: How should we test (reduced) visual imagery in a foreign language?
We agree with HK18 that reduced visual imagery in a foreign language would be an intriguing finding of great theoretical relevance. We have nevertheless argued that this claim is not justified by their empirical evidence, as there is a simpler and more compelling alternative explanation for their results. What, then, would be a better test of reduced visual imagery?
It is useful to first consider the phenomenology of the claim: What would it mean for visual imagery to be reduced in a foreign
Funding
This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 2018-00245 to Guillermo Montero-Melis].
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