The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of phonological encoding in the silent speech of persons who stutter (PWS) and persons who do not stutter (PNS). Participants were 10 PWS (M=30.4 years, S.D.=7.8), matched in age, gender, and handedness with 11 PNS (M=30.1 years, S.D.=7.8). Each participant performed five tasks: a…

Private speech used by high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) (n=33) during two executive functioning tasks was compared to that of typically developing children (n=28), and children with ADHD (n=21). Children with ASD were as likely as others to talk to themselves and their speech was similarly relevant and likely to…

During a study designed to examine the processes of learning English as an additional language as manifest in the interactive behaviour of small groups of bilingual school children playing specially designed board games, several instances of "private speech" were captured. Private speech is commonly described as speech addressed to the self for…

If rehearsal can be identified with inner speech and if Vygotsky's theory of the development of inner speech is correct, then it should be possible to disrupt rehearsal by impairing articulation in young children. Performing a delayed short-term memory task with impaired articulation did not lead to a large decrement in performance as compared…

Reviews research indicating that subvocalization does not hinder reading ability and may assist less able readers. (Author/FL)

The present study examines private speech and strategy-use patterns for solving simple number fact problems in addition. The progressive differentiation by grade between children's levels of private speech internalization--including silence--was investigated and related to children's developmental patterns for subcategories of strategy-use…

Teenagers with nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) have difficulty with fine-motor coordination, which may relate to the novelty of the task or the lack of "self-talk" to mediate action. In this study, we required two teenagers with NLD and two control group teenagers to touch the thumb of each hand firmly and accurately to the fingertips of the…

The ideas of Vygotsky [Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). "Thinking and speech." In "The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky," (Vol. 1). New York: Plenum. (Original work published 1934.)] have been increasingly influential in accounting for social-environmental influences on the development of social understanding (SU). In the first part of this article, I…

Speech plays important and complex roles in self-regulation and is experienced in several distinct forms: as a social-discursive mode of communication and direction (social speech), as vocalizations directed to the self rather than to others (private speech), and as the phenomenologically subjective "interior dialogue" through which the…

Findings suggest that although the overt, self-regulatory private speech of high-risk children is apparently normal, their marked lack of whispering indicates difficulties in the subvocalization or internalization of such speech. (PCB)

Contends that anger is a temporary internal state and that counselors can teach clients to recognize early signs of anger and choose healthy responses. Proposes that counselors teach clients to speak assertively and deal fairly and to use inner dialog and inner drama to avoid displaced verbal responses. (LLL)

Illustrates the power of video recording to elicit the thinking of teachers as they reflect on their teaching practices. Draws on the work of Wiley (1994), which identified the internal conversation as a critical feature of the semiotic self. (Author/VWL)

This philosophical essay is inspired by a four-year pedagogical relationship that continues in its altered form today. The main focus of this piece is the transformation of a mentor as an immediate addressee into mentor as a "superaddressee," an influential third listener who oversees observable dialogues. I explore the mutual responsibilities of…

There is a paucity of Vygotskian influenced inner speech research in relation to the reading process. Those few studies which have examined Vygotskian inner speech from a reading perspective tend to support the notion that inner speech is an important covert function that is crucial to the reading process and to reading acquisition in general.…

According to Lev Vygotsky, private speech has a functional value for the child during problem solving. As children grow older, private speech is thought to become inner, non-observable speech. Both private and inner speech are abbreviated. A study tested the hypothesis of the progressive abbreviation of private speech. Private speech data were…