Resumen de Effects of tropical climate and language format on imagery ability among French-Creole Bilinguals

Nicolas Robin, Frédéric Anciaux, Guillaume R. Coudevylle

• This study examined how a tropical climate (i.e. hot and wet climatic environment) and different language instructions, in French and in Creole, could affect imagery ability on French-Creole bilingual in the French West Indies. Participants were divided into two groups: Half of them completed the French Movement Imagery Questionnaire (MIQ-F), the others realized the Creole version (MIQ-C), in Neutral Climate (NC) then in Tropical Climate (TC). The results of this original study showed that participants had lower visual and kinaesthetic MIQ-F and kinaesthetic MIQ-C imagery scores, but had higher visual MIQ-C imagery scores, in TC than in NC. Poor imagers had significant lower kinaesthetic MIQ-F, and better visual MIQ-C imagery scores in TC than in NC. The results of this study suggested that imagery language instruction can modulate the influence of tropical climate on imagery ability. The difference between Creole and French language effects on cognition as imagery is discussed.