Abstract
Conflict between response tendencies is ubiquitous in every day performance. Capabilities that resolve such conflicts are therefore mandatory for successful goal achievement. The present study investigates the potential of evaluative and motivational inner speech to help conflict resolution. In our study we assessed six tasks commonly used to measure conflict resolution capabilities and cognitive flexibility in 163 participants. Participants additionally answered questionnaires concerned with their habitual usage of inner speech such as silently rehearsing task instructions and evaluating performance. We found reduced conflict effects in tasks using symbolic, non-verbal stimuli for participants with higher self-reported use of evaluative and motivational inner speech. Overall, our findings suggest that silent self-talk and performance monitoring are beneficial for conflict resolution over and above constructs such as intelligence and working memory capacity that account for mean RT differences among participants.
Highlights
In everyday tasks, we often encounter opposing response tendencies, which lead to the experience of conflict[1,2,3]
We found that habits related to motivational (i.e., “you can do that”) and evaluative (i.e, “well done”) inner speech predict the size of the Simon effect[19]
We were interested to what degree inner speech habits benefit cognitive control
Summary
Factor structure of the inner speech questionnaires and correlations with big five, depression, working memory capacity and intelligence. VISQ and STS subscales, were only weakly correlated (mean r = 0.17), leading to an unacceptable fit of the preregistered one-factor measurement model (CFI = 0.80, RMSEA = 0.14). Separate confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) for the VISQ and STS showed acceptable fit for models with latent factors for each of the four assumed subscales and the corresponding items as manifest variables (VISQ, CFI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.058; STS CFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.065), replicating the factor structures of the original versions. There were no meaningful correlations of the inner speech scales with the Big 5 (mean r = 0.02 for the VISQ subscales and r = −0.01 for the STS subscales). There were small positive correlations of the inner speech scales with the ADS (mean r = 0.14 for the VISQ subscales and r = 0.16 for the STS subscales).
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