Private speech in young adults

The current study investigated the relationship between private speech usage and cognitive performance in young adults. Participants (n = 103, mean age = 20.21 years) were instructed to complete a visual-spatial working memory task while talking out loud to themselves as much as possible (Private Speech condition). We found that participants performed better on trials for which they produced a greater amount of private speech. To establish causality, we further found that participants performed better in the Private Speech condition than in a condition in which they were instructed to remain silent (Quiet condition). These beneficial effects of private speech were not moderated by task difficulty, which was manipulated by varying image labelability. However, participants who used more private speech during the task, as well as those who reported greater use of self-management private speech in everyday life, showed the greatest benefits. These findings have implications for real-world educational/instructional settings.

This study used a card-matching game that relies on visual-spatial working memory to investigate whether the amount one talks out loud to themselves (referred to as private speech) predicts cognitive performance in young adults (n = 118, mean age = 20.13 years). Each participant's performance was measured in two “Private Speech” trials, in which they were instructed to complete the game efficiently, while using private speech as much as they can. Using multilevel modeling, we found that participants performed significantly better on trials for which they produced more private speech. This relationship was not moderated by baseline competency on the task (measured in a condition where participants were not instructed to use, and rarely ever used, private speech). The study shows that the degree to which adults use private speech — when instructed to do so, is associated with cognitive performance, which may have important implications for educational/instructional settings.

Adults who stutter tend not to stutter when they are alone. This phenomenon is difficult to study because it is difficult to know whether participants perceive that they are truly alone and not being heard or observed. This may explain the presence of stuttering during previous studies in which stutterers spoke while they were alone. We addressed this issue by developing a paradigm that elicited private speech, or overt speech meant only for the speaker. We tested the hypothesis that adults do not stutter during private speech.

Twenty-four participants were audio-/video-recorded while speaking in several conditions: 1) conversational speech; 2) reading; 3) private speech, in which deception was used to increase the probability that participants produced speech intended for only themselves; 4) private speech+, for which real-time transcription was used so that participants produced the same words as in the private speech condition but while addressing two listeners; and 5) a second conversational speech condition.

Stuttering was not observed in more than 10,000 syllables produced during the private speech condition, except for seven possible, mild stuttering events exhibited by 3 of 24 participants. Stuttering frequency was similar for the remaining conditions.

Adults appear not to stutter during private speech, indicating that speakers' perceptions of listeners, whether real or imagined, play a critical and likely necessary role in the manifestation of stuttering events. Future work should disentangle whether this is due to the removal of concerns about social evaluation or judgment, self-monitoring, or other communicative processes.

Inner speech is a common experience for many but hard to measure empirically. The Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire (VISQ) has been used to link everyday phenomenology of inner speech – such as inner dialogue – to various psychopathological traits. However, positive and supportive aspects of inner speech have not always been captured. This study presents a revised version of the scale – the VISQ-R – based on factor analyses in two large samples: respondents to a survey on inner speech and reading (N = 1412) and a sample of university students (N = 377). Exploratory factor analysis indicated a five-factor structure including three previous subscales (dialogic, condensed, and other people in inner speech), an evaluative/critical factor, and a new positive/regulatory factor. Confirmatory factor analysis then replicated this structure in sample 2. Hierarchical regression analyses also replicated a number of relations between inner speech, hallucination-proneness, anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and dissociation.

Athlete self-talk is often measured by self-report, but seldom are self-reports compared to observed, audible self-talk. In this study, 28 tennis players attending a youth camp (M_age = 12 years) were observed in practice and match play for positive, negative, motivational, and instructional self-talk. They reported how often they used self-talk phrases (Automatic Self-Talk Questionnaire) and how much of their speech was aloud and inside their head (Self-Talk Use Questionnaire). We observed the same players on the court for overt self-talk use during practice and match play (Self-Talk and Gestures Rating Scale). In observation, players used more negative than positive self-talk, and they infrequently used instructional self-talk in matches and practice. Tennis athletes who reported more overt self-talk were observed to use more self-talk during tennis. In most cases, athlete self-report of positive and negative self-talk did not relate to observation of positive and negative self-talk. We argue that self-report for youth athletes needs to be confirmed by observation.

This article examines how students use language and participate in discourse during shared authoring of online texts in a mathematics classroom. The paper presents an intervention study conducted in an upper secondary classroom in Norway, where a wiki website was provided for the students to create mathematical explanations together. The students were organized in dyads. Considering the students' written products, work patterns, and ongoing speech and interaction between collaborating students, the use of language and participation in discourse in the classroom was genuinely altered by introducing the wiki. The wiki and the students' textbook were the main mediating resources used. A discursive space was demonstrated, where articulating and evaluating mathematical descriptions was realized through writing. When writing together, the students' articulatory processes and thinking became overt and socially shared between collaborating students. Here elaborations and deepening of arguments took place as the students' thinking and mathematical efforts became explicit. The results suggest that the wiki text authoring was experienced as a discourse having a different purpose—as opposed to what is regularly associated with teacher-led instructional schemes—and thus the discursive activities went beyond a merely transmissional discourse. Implications for mathematics teaching and learning are discussed.