Inner speech, that little voice that people often hear inside their heads while thinking, is a form of mental imagery. The properties of inner speech errors can be used to investigate the nature of inner speech, just as overt slips are informative about overt speech production. Overt slips tend to create words ("lexical bias") and involve similar…

This study examined developmental change and variation across social context in the quality of children's conversations, with a dual focus on (1) conflict and (2) inner state talk (IST). Each measure was coded as a proportion of total talk, using transcripts from 57 three- to six-year-olds, filmed at home at two time points (12 months apart) in…

Theories of verbal self-monitoring generally assume an internal (pre-articulatory) monitoring channel, but there is debate about whether this channel relies on speech perception or on production-internal mechanisms. Perception-based theories predict that listening to one's own inner speech has similar behavioural consequences as listening to…

Recent research indicates that individuals with autism do not effectively use inner speech during the completion of cognitive tasks. We used Articulatory Suppression (AS) to interfere with inner speech during completion of alternate items from the Tower of London (TOL). AS detrimentally affected TOL performance among typically developing (TD)…

There are many links between literacy and movement. Movement and language are both forms of communication and self-expression. Rhythm is an essential component of both language and movement. While people may think of rhythm primarily in musical terms, there is a rhythm to words and sentences as well. Individuals develop an internal rhythm when…

This article interrogates the notion of "glocalization" (Moja, 2004, based on Castells, 2001) as a concept that seeks to integrate the local and the global to address both the need for social justice and the need to participate in a global market economy. The article argues that the relation between the global and the local cannot be…

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of B. F. Skinner's "Verbal Behavior", it may be important to reconsider the role of the listener in the verbal episode. Although by Skinner's own admission, "Verbal Behavior" was primarily about the behavior of the speaker, his definition of verbal behavior as "behavior reinforced through the…

This paper reports two experiments designed to investigate whether lexical bias in phonological speech errors is caused by immediate feedback of activation, by self-monitoring of inner speech, or by both. The experiments test a number of predictions derived from a model of self-monitoring of inner speech. This model assumes that, after an error in…

The inner voice- we all know what it is because we all have it and use it when we are thinking or reading, for example. Little work has been done on it in our field, with the notable exception of Brian Tomlinson, but presumably it must be a cognitive phenomenon which is of great importance in thinking, language learning, and reading in a foreign…

In this study I investigated the relative effects of different reading methods on the comprehension performance of Saudi EFL 10th grade male students. The scores of participants who read three comparable passages in three ways (oral, silent and subvocalizing) were compared. Results revealed a significant difference between oral reading and…

Students often voice computations during group discussions of mathematics problems. Yet, this type of private speech has received little attention from mathematics educators or researchers. In this article, we use excerpts from middle school students' group mathematical discussions to illustrate and describe "computational private…

The overall purpose of the present study was to examine whether an intervention program (50 weeks), modeled as training in accordance with the developmental course of private speech (from audible private speech to silent inner speech), itself would add positively to the development of mathematical competence. The sample comprised two comparable…

Disagreement exists about how speakers monitor their internal speech. Production-based accounts assume that self-monitoring mechanisms exist within the production system, whereas comprehension-based accounts assume that monitoring is achieved through the speech comprehension system. Comprehension-based accounts predict perception-specific effects,…

Music represents an integral part of the human culture, and particularly language and communication. Music can be a powerful tool in the learning experience. The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether English native-speaker students learning a foreign language can benefit from integrating music into the curriculum. Students' text…

In this accessible introduction to Vygotskyian sociocultural theory, narratives illuminate key concepts of the theory. These key concepts, addressed across seven chapters, include mediation; Zone of Proximal Development; collaborative dialogue; private speech; everyday and scientific concepts; the interrelatedness of cognition and emotion,…