Private speech and other forms of self-communication.

Abstract

Introduction A popular idea in fictional literature and psychological theory is that self-communication can be verbal or nonverbal. A literary example is Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. In the first volume, Swann's Way, Swann's mother gives him a spoonful of tea with crumbs of madeleine in it and this taste stimulus evokes a strong sense of joy, but the stimulus does not lead to any understanding of why joy was the specific emotion aroused. Swann eventually remembers by first shutting out all other sensations and thoughts and, later, taking a break from this concentration; but the remembering takes up three pages of narrative (Proust, 1928, pp. 62-65). The initial self-communication involved a sensory stimulus and an emotional response, and the final self-communication resulted from the processes that psychologists call incubation and insight, but these processes were enabled by the verbal self-instruction to focus attention on remembering the connection between the sensation and the emotion and to shut down this focusing of attention when it was initially unsuccessful. The connection, by the way, was that a favorite aunt gave him a bit of madeleine dipped in tea on Sunday mornings when was a child. Keywords: verbal communication, non verbal communication, incubation, insight. Another literary example is the synesthesia in Arthur Rimbaud's (1871/1966) poem Vowels: A black, E white, I red, U green, 0 blue: vowels, One day I will tell your latent birth: A, black hairy corset of shining flies Which buzz around cruel stench, and so on (p. 121). A final literary example is in Huysmann's (1884/1969) Against the Grain. The protagonist constructs what calls a organ--not the kind twanged to make a low order of music but an analogue of a pipe organ. Each pipe contains a liquor, liqueur, or beer and playing a tasteful melody on the keyboard delivers drops of the potables into small glasses, yielding a combination of flavors to suit his mood. The interesting point here is a nonverbal kind of self-communication in which flavors are analogues of auditory images. Huysmans said: Dry curacao, for instance, was like the clarinet with its shrill, velvety note; kummel like the oboe, whose timbre is sonorous and nasal; creme de menthe and anisette like the flute, at one and the same time sweet and poignant, whining and soft ... kirch, blowing a wild trumpet blast; gin and whisky, deafening the palate with their harsh outbursts of cornets and trombones; liqueur brandy, blaring with the overwhelming crash of the tubas, while the thunder peals of the cymbals and the big drum ... are reproduced in the mouth by the rakis [i.e., arracks], (pp. 44-45) He also had Benedictine as the minor key corresponding to the major key of green Chartreuse, and much more, so that he could execute on his tongue a succession of voiceless melodies (p. 45). Huysmans also remarked about the memory-evoking property of some tastes: His protagonist drank some Irish whisky, which to him had a taste of creosote, which reminded him of carbolic acid, which reminded him of dental work had had. Self-communication can also be nonverbal in some psychological theories. For example, according to Jerome Bruner (1964) thinking in infancy is based primarily on kinesthetic images, or enactive representations, in early childhood visual and auditory images, or iconic representations, and only after early childhood on words, or semantic representations. John B. Watson had a more global view: Thinking is done primarily in words but also involves the whole body (e.g., 1930, chap. 10, 11). According to the Canadian neo-behaviorist Allan Paivio, even in adulthood self-communication is often done with visual images. Most early information-processing theorists agreed, but after the early 1970s almost all of them limited self-communication to verbal representations. …