Abstract
Inner speech (IS), or the act of silently talking to yourself, occurs in humans regardless of their cultural and linguistic background, suggesting its key role in human cognition. The absence of overt articulation leads to methodological challenges to studying IS and its effects on cognitive processing. Investigating IS in children is particularly problematic due to cognitive demands of the behavioral tasks and age restrictions for collecting neurophysiological data [e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or electromyography (EMG)]; thus, the developmental aspects of IS remain poorly understood despite the long history of adult research. Studying developmental aspects of IS could shed light on the variability in types and amount of IS in adults. In addition, problems in mastering IS might account for neuropsychological deficits observed in children with neurodevelopmental conditions. For example, deviance in IS development might influence these children’s general cognitive processing, including social cognition, executive functioning, and related social–emotional functioning. The aim of the present paper is to look at IS from a developmental perspective, exploring its theory and identifying experimental paradigms appropriate for preschool and early school-aged children in Anglophone and Russian literature. We choose these two languages because the original work carried out by Vygotsky on IS was published in Russian, and Russian scientists have continued to publish on this topic since his death. Since the 1960s, much of the experimental work in this area has been published in Anglophone journals. We discuss different measurements of IS phenomena, their informativeness about subtypes of IS, and their potential for studying atypical language development. Implications for assessing and stimulating IS in clinical populations are discussed.
Highlights
Inner speech serves as a valuable concept that has withstood the test of time since it was first articulated by Vygotsky and his colleagues
Behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological paradigms have made progress exploring covert speech in adults, but few of them could be used with children, including preschoolers and those from atypical populations
The area that has the most potential for future research is the study of Inner speech (IS) in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, because in such conditions, children often experience deficits in expressive and receptive language skills in combination with self-regulation and Theory of Mind problems
Summary
Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015) have summarized findings on the role of IS during cognitive processing, highlighting its effects on executive functions, including short-term memory (Williams et al, 2012) planning (Al-Namlah et al, 2006; Lidstone et al, 2010), control of behavior (Cragg and Nation, 2010; see DeGraaf and Schlinger, 2012), inhibition, and cognitive flexibility (Fatzer and Roebers, 2012). Interactions between language development, cognitive development, and behavioral problems have been reported for children with atypical language profiles – related to developmental language disorder (DLD), hearing loss, and autism (e.g., Jamieson, 1995; Wallace et al, 2009; Lidstone et al, 2012; Vissers et al, 2018) Communication with these children can be challenging, leading to insufficient input and language practice and subsequent social isolation. A recent intervention study has demonstrated that self-regulatory speech training, which is analogous to PS stimulation, can improve planning and problem-solving performance in children with DLD (Abdul Aziz et al, 2016), suggesting environmental origins of IS and direct implications for future clinical practice To summarize, it appears that IS optimizes cognitive performance in adults and accounts for cognitive deficits in children with DLD, hearing loss, and autism, it is difficult to anticipate the detail of qualitatively different manifestations of IS across clinical populations. Impaired overt speech (“communication with others”) leads to disruptions in PS and IS throughout the speech internalization process, but more evidence is needed to explore the fine-grained differences in the IS profiles across clinical populations
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