The study's aims were to (a) evaluate preschoolers' use of private speech (overt talk to themselves) during spelling; and (b) study how it is affected by the nature of orthography. Participants were 197 Hebrew speaking Israeli preschoolers (109 girls and 88 boys) (M = 5.6 years). Children spelled 12 words (N =44 letters) that represented one of…

Purpose: Our goal was to examine the relationship between language and executive function in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or developmental language disorder (DLD) with a specific focus on how language in the form of self-directed speech (SDS) affects executive functioning in this population. Method: Participants included…

Rehearsal is a form of self-talk used to support short-term memory. Historically, the study of rehearsal development has diverged from the study of self-talk more generally. The current experiment examines whether two characteristics of self-talk (impact of task difficulty and self-talk's narrative vs. planning purpose) are also observed in…

I conducted a descriptive study consisting of 30 preschool participants with and without disabilities to examine the relation between the 3 bidirectional operants. The bidirectional operants were speaker-as-own-listener cusps, which included bidirectional verbal operants between people, bidirectional self-talk conversational units, and…

The present study examined children's co-construction of shared meanings and internal state language during play with their sibling and friend from early to middle childhood. Sixty-five 4-year-old children (T1) and 46 7-year-old children (T2) were observed in the home during two free play sessions with a sibling and with a friend at both time…

The present study explored relations among language skills, private speech, and self-regulation in three- to five-year-old children. Language skills were assessed with a standardised measure of language ability and by teacher reports of adaptive use of language in the classroom. Private speech was measured by observing children during a…

Private speech utterances (PS) from 24 preschool children and 24 adults were obtained under (noninteracting) listener present and listener absent conditions using 2 tasks with an identical structure. Children produced significantly more PS in the listener present condition. Similar results were obtained with adults, albeit with a reduced incidence…

The present study aimed to extend understanding of preschoolers' early spelling using the Vygotskian ("Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes," Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1978) paradigm of child development. We assessed the contribution of maternal spelling support in predicting children's word…

In this study we explored the relation between private speech and task mastery by using the microgenetic method to examine the language and performance of 13 children aged 4 and 5 as they gained expertise with a spatial, multi-step planning task across 6 sessions. Seven of the 13 children's performances across these sessions were characterized by…

Research Findings: Although the role of language and private speech in the development of behavioral self-regulation has been studied, relations between behavioral self-regulation and children's experiences with other symbolic systems, such as music, have not yet been explored. Eighty-nine 3- and 4-year-old children (42 of whom had been enrolled…

This qualitative study presents sociolinguistic characteristics of peer-talk of 44 children in a Mandarin-English-speaking preschool in Taiwan where English was taught as a foreign language (EFL). Key findings: teacher-dominated talk influences children's peer-talk; EFL and code-switching emerge in spontaneous peer-talk; children actively engage…

Results of an experiment with children ages 3-11 years performing serial recall tasks suggest that it is not until about age 5 years that children's overt speech reaches a functional stage that would justify internalization. (Author/WY)

Two studies showed preschoolers have little knowledge and awareness of inner speech. Study 1 showed that, compared to 6- to 7-year olds and adults, 4-year olds usually did not infer that persons silently engaged in verbal mental activities were saying things to themselves. Study 2 demonstrated that 4- and 5-year olds are much poorer than adults at…

Investigates the relationship of subvocal speech to recall in 46 4- and 5-year-old children on three muscle sites: lip, chin, and a nonspeech control. (LLK)

Examined developmental stability and change in children's private speech during the preschool years across-task constituency in children's self-speech, and across-setting relations between private speech in the laboratory and behavior at home and in the classroom. Clear associations were found between children's private speech use in the…