Private speech in young adults

Abstract

In a repeated measures factorial experiment, private speech was recorded while young adult university students worked on computer and paper-folding tasks during two sessions. Each session included an easy computer task, a difficult computer task, a repetition of the difficult task, and three trials copying an origami model. All 53 participants used private speech. Private speech was more frequent on the first trial on the difficult computer task than on either the second trial or the easy task, and its frequency decreased across paper-folding trials within each session. Predicted short-term changes in temporal relations between speech and action and in structural characteristics of private speech were also observed. The present findings of high rates of private speech use and of its self-regulatory and predicative characteristics among young adults call into question longstanding generalizations regarding the ontogeny of private speech. Changes in private speech may reflect localized knowledge based on particular experiences and activity rather than — or in addition to — generalized developmental patterns. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.