Language Task Performance Research Articles

Two experiments were conducted in which subjects wrote words or engaged in comparable nonlinguistic (control) tasks. It was found that both covert oral behavior and breathing rate, but not covert nonoral behavior, were significantly greater during the linguistic task. Furthermore, amplitude of covert oral behavior varied inversely with the quality of handwriting. The interpretation is that covert oral behavior is beneficial in the performance of language tasks. There is considerable evidence that subjects make covert oral responses when engaged in a variety of language tasks. For instance, heightened levels of electromyograms (EMG) have been recorded from several oral regions (tongue, lips, or chin) when subjects silently read prose, when they listened to prose, when they solved problems, and when they thought about abstract terms such as 'electrical resistance. Handwriting is a linguistic activity for which associated covert behavior has been less extensively studied. The implication from the performance on other linguistic tasks is that subjects would Received for publication September 5, 1968. Edited by Professor E. B. Newman. The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, under the provisions of the Cooperative Research Program. The author thanks Douglas Gresham, Susan Guthrie, Marty Muller, Norman Ostrov, and Ronald Savukas for their help in collecting and analyzing data. 1A. W. Edfeldt, Silent Speech and Silent Reading, 1960, 153; F. J. McGuigan, B. Keller, and E. Stanton, Covert language responses during silent reading, J. educ. Psychol., 55, 1964, 339-343; F. J. McGuigan and W. I. Rodier III, Effects of auditory stimulation on covert oral behavior during silent reading, J. exp. Psychol., 76, 1968, 649-655; A. A. Smith, R. B. Malmo, and C. Shagass, An electromyographic study of listening and talking, Canad. J. Psychol., 8, 1954, 219-227; H. Wallerstein, An electromyographic study of attentive listening, Canad. J. Psychol., 8, 1954 228-238; L. A. Novikova, Electrophysiological investigations of speech, in N. O'Connor (ed.), Recent Soviet Psychology, 1961, 210-226; E. Jacobson, Electrophysiology of mental activities, this JOURNAL, 44, 1932, 677-694.

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