Title: Rather, do you think primarily in your native language, or more in terms of abstract imagery?<p>I've noticed that rather than forming images in my head to represent ideas, I will instead often <i>think in English</i>.  For example, if I'm working through a logic problem, I will repeat the various elements of the problem in my head <i>in English</i> repeatedly until I solve it.<p>I'm unfortunately unilingual.  English is the only human language I have ever learned.  I've noticed that when I speak phrases in Spanish, I'm actually speaking English in my head.  It's like a lookup table. By that I mean, let's say I want to communicate "How are you?".  Rather than attempting to reason through this task in Spanish (by trying to communicate the individual elements "how", 'in what way', "are", 'your state of being', and "you" 'the person I am communicating with'), I try to remember the phrase in Spanish that corresponds to the ordered set of words "How are you?".  So it is rote memorization -- I'm not thinking in Spanish, I'm translating from English to Spanish, speaking it, then hearing a response and translating that back into English.  No wonder I was never able to learn another language.  There's always this complicated layer of indirection.<p>Anyway, back to the topic: do you find that you think more in terms of words or of images?<p>Here's one reason I can't imagine thinking through a problem without reciting it to myself in English several times.  Let's say for example I need to describe the concept 'empathy', which is to say, understanding another person's situation by virtue of having been in a similar one yourself.  I'd imagine it would be very difficult to conjure up an image which succinctly describes empathy.  It seems like the verbal encoding "empathy" is probably the most succinct way to describe it.  So why try to think in terms of images when our native languages are so very precise?<p>And yet, "thinking in English" can be a burden.  I can feel how it limits me to thinking through problems in certain predefined ways, just as a given editor forces you to edit text in certain predefined ways.  I would imagine that most extremely creative people (such as DaVinci, Tesla, etc) probably don't have this limitation imposed on their neocortex.<p>More importantly, my reading speed is significantly degraded.  I tend to recite each sentence to myself as I read it.  I've been unable to find much information about how to break this limitation, so any references would be very appreciated.<p>Thoughts?
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