Private Speech Research Articles

Emergent bilingual children during the silent period: A scoping review of their communication strategies and classroom environments.

This scoping review aimed to investigate the communication strategies utilized by children who acquire a minority language (L1) and subsequently learn a community language (L2) during what is commonly referred to as the "silent period." Electronic database searches were conducted using keywords such as "silent period" and "bilingual children," resulting in the inclusion of 40 studies in the review. The findings revealed that emergent bilingual children utilize various communication strategies, including nonverbal communication, private speech, and their L1, to communicate within classroom environments. The findings shed light on the adaptability of emergent bilingual children during early stage of L2 acquisition. Furthermore, our review provides information about the classroom contexts such as teacher support and peer interactions where children develop their L2 skills. From a clinical perspective, recognizing these strategies and classroom contexts could significantly enhance the screening process for emergent bilingual children.

Job Conditions and Practice of Private Office-Based Speech-Language Pathologists in Korea: A Cross-Sectional Survey

Purpose: Private speech therapy centers remain an ongoing concern, especially as the primary working environment for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in Korea. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current working conditions and contents of the speech therapy services of private practice-based SLPs from the perspectives of employed SLPs to find factors that can positively affect future job retention, recruitment, and satisfaction.Methods: This study conducted a web-based survey across Korea targeting private practicebased SLPs. A total of 265 SLPs were invited to participate, and 219 completed the response. The study was divided into three parts, covering demographic information, work type, environment information, service contents, and client-related information, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the current landscape.Results: Regular full-time jobs with social insurance were the most employed types of Korean SLPs in private practice. Fisher’s exact tests showed no significant effects on the type of employment and salary according to the kind of certificate. The location of the private speech therapy center affected the unit price per session. In addition, there was no significant difference in salary level depending on the employment conditions and certificate type.Conclusions: The findings of this study are significant for the field of speech therapy. Despite being the main service of private speech therapy centers, the costs related to evaluation and treatment were found to have lower unit fees than other psychological and developmental rehabilitation service areas. This disparity could potentially impact the recruitment and job retention of private practice-based SLPs. Therefore, it is crucial to consider supporting incentives based on the type of certificate and career, along with fee adjustments suitable for the current reality, to address these issues.

Shut-up Toys for Second Language Learners: Impact of Digital Media on Early Adolescents' Private Speech Production in Individual and Collaborative Tasks.

Researchers, parents, and policymakers from previous generations have recently expressed concern about the inevitable exposure of youngsters to digital media and its potentially detrimental effects on their development. Private speech is the overt audible self-talk people produce when engaged with challenging problem-solving tasks and is believed to aid in second language acquisition as reported (Vygotsky in Thought and language, MIT Press, 1962); (Winsler in Private Speech, Executive Functioning, and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation, 2009). This qualitative case study explored private speech production in three young adolescents (two 11-year-olds and one 10-year-old) while completing an English as a foreign language task (Bingo! game) individually and collaboratively in physical and digital modes. Patterns of participants' private speech markers emerged from a thematic analysis of the transcribed oral interactions during eight sessions. The frequency of occurrence of the participants' private speech markers was reported and interpreted based on the emergent typology to compare collaborative and individual task completion in physical and digital modes. Regardless of the individual or collaborative nature of the task, private speech use decreased during the digital version of the game. However, collaborative tasks evoked more private speech from the participants regardless of modality. The findings of the study suggest digital media usage is likely to hinder private speech production for self-regulatory purposes in young adolescents, even in collaboration with peers.

The Interfunctional Relationship Between Theory of Mind and Private Speech.

Theory of mind is the capacity to explain and predict the behavior of others. Charles Fernyhough's dialogical model of psychological functions offers a vision of theory of mind that considers the social dimension and the importance of language, especially inner and private speech, for a person's ability to represent and manipulate multiple perspectives, and its connection to executive function. There is little direct research on Fernyhough's model. The present study addressed that gap by studying the relationship between theory of mind, private speech, and executive function (planning) in the preschool years. Data were collected from a total of 86 preschool children from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala; 24 were from the first grade of preschool, 30 from the second, and 32 from the third. Their degree of internalization and their speech types (i.e., social and private) were obtained by coding their utterances during free play and during performance of a Tower of London task. Lastly, their theory of mind was assessed with a change of location and an unexpected contents task. No correlation was found between children's theory of mind and their degree of internalization. However, inaudible private speech was correlated (negatively) to theory of mind performance in the third grade of preschool. Furthermore, their scores on the Tower of London task were negatively correlated with social speech and positively correlated with inaudible private speech, while the reverse was true for time of execution. The results suggested that the degree of internalization is a measure of the regulative function of language, not the ability to manipulate perspectives, and that it is inadequate for capturing subtle differences between performance and speech types. Role-playing conditions were recommended as better tasks for exploring the capacities for manipulating and understanding different perspectives during the preschool years.

Fifteen years journey of a private speech & language therapy service in rural Ireland - navigating the needs of the local communities and expanding collaborations.

Private Kerry SLT clinic (KSLTC) was started in January 2007 in rural Ireland, at the time when out-patient services were limited. At that early stage, there was only one speech & language therapist (SLT) in the KSLTC providing the service a few hours per week. The majority of referrals came from medical consultants. Over the years, by maintaining a flexible approach to local community needs, KSLTC expanded and gradually changed the focus of care. Currently, there are seven therapists providing the SLT service in collaboration with local charities, schools, primary care, disability and acute services. 
 This presentation is for anyone interested in collaborative private and public care and this could contribute to the delivery of integrated care. 
 We aim to present the evolution and the current delivery of a small private service, which is based on local collaborations and distributed leadership. 
 We would like to discuss:
 -how KSLTC evolved in response to the key developments in the public system, such as the reconfiguration of disability services for children or introduction of integrated care services for older people. 
 -what are the service priorities and how they align with the needs of the local communities.
 -what are the main challenges and opportunities to progress collaborations with external services / agencies.
 KSLTC has been engaging in local collaborations since the beginning. Initially, the service provided by the KSLTC was guided by the requests of the local consultants and therefore the focus was medical in nature. Over the years it became apparent that the biggest community needs are in the area of early intervention, disability and autism. KSLTC entered various collaborations to ensure the service provided privately is integrated with the public system and where possible the funding was sought to subsidise the session cost for the clients. One example of the above collaboration is working jointly with a group of parents of children with Down syndrome and a group of parents with autism to co-design the delivery of SLT service. As a result, the services provided are not only clinic based, but are also delivered in the local schools, day centres and in people’s homes. The service is being evaluated jointly with the group of parents’ representatives. 
 There every-day practice in KSLTC is based on the culture of mutual trust and respect. To provide an efficient service, a flexible approach guided by the service users’ needs is paramount. The integration with the public systems brings multiple opportunities, but also challenges. We hope that our experiences can be valuable to other professionals interested in managing and delivering clinical services with limited resources, private and public collaboration of care, and distributed leadership. 

Private speech improves cognitive performance in young adults

The current study investigated the relationship between private speech usage and cognitive performance in young adults. Participants (n = 103, mean age = 20.21 years) were instructed to complete a visual-spatial working memory task while talking out loud to themselves as much as possible (Private Speech condition). We found that participants performed better on trials for which they produced a greater amount of private speech. To establish causality, we further found that participants performed better in the Private Speech condition than in a condition in which they were instructed to remain silent (Quiet condition). These beneficial effects of private speech were not moderated by task difficulty, which was manipulated by varying image labelability. However, participants who used more private speech during the task, as well as those who reported greater use of self-management private speech in everyday life, showed the greatest benefits. These findings have implications for real-world educational/instructional settings.

Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation: Private Speech in Cognitive and Emotion Contexts

Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation: Private Speech in Cognitive and Emotion Contexts

The social consequences of talking to oneself: The dialectical continuum of social and private speech

AbstractThe intrapersonal functions of private speech have been researched extensively. However, studies in interactive settings that focus on the interpersonal functions of private speech have been rare. Adopting a case‐study approach, I investigated the social consequences of private speech and how it contributes to the establishment of intersubjectivity during collaborative tasks. Data were collected through video recordings of participants collaboratively processing feedback on jointly produced texts, retrospective interviews that included stimulated recall, and collaborative writing tasks. Findings show instances of private speech acting as a tool that helps establish intersubjectivity, thus promoting joint problem solving and potentially affording interlocutors more opportunities to co‐construct knowledge. These opportunities for learning were made possible when interlocutors used the private speech of a peer as a resource to build upon when deliberating on a response to feedback. This indicates that the ability to understand the intra‐ and interpersonal functions of an interlocutors’ private speech is an important aspect of interactional competence in an additional language.

The effectiveness of social stories in an intervention program in late adolescence with high functioning autism spectrum disorders: A case study report

People with high-functioning autism (HFA) demonstrated significant social skill deficits compared to those typically developing. Relatively limited data is still known about the challenges faced (friendship, social networks) by adolescents with HFA and so far with a delayed diagnosis. The case study aimed to investigate social stories’ effectiveness by using an intensive intervention approach on a late-adolescent female with autism. A 17-year-old girl with a recent diagnosis of HFA was selected as a case study from a private Speech and Language Therapy Center to involve in an immediate intervention program. A single-case research design was used to monitor changes after an intervention. Specifically, observation and training lasted four weeks, plus two weeks of maintenance. The intervention was done exclusively with social stories personalised to her needs. The targeted behaviours were to enhance social interaction skills, especially her ability to make friends and improve communication. There was a positive response from the young female in the intensive intervention program. Moreover, she displayed more positive peer interaction throughout the intervention program (6 weeks). She managed to participate and ask peers to companies in High school, to start a conversation, and to call them into her house in a positive way 44 times in 6 weeks. In addition, after every intervention week, we recorded an increase in her positive interactions with peers. The results demonstrate that social story use enhances HFA adolescents' social engagement. This study provides insights into the relationship between intensive social story intervention, social communication and social interaction behaviours between adolescents with a recent diagnosis of HFA and peers. Moreover, the findings support the effectiveness of social stories in encouraging social interaction of a late adolescent with HFA.

Pediatric Dysphonia and the Access to Voice Therapy: A Study in Speech-Language Patology Services Available in a Capital City in the Northeast of Brazil

Defining the laryngeal and vocal alterations in the pediatric group studied in private speech therapy facilities; and estimating the time period between the problem being identified by the parents and the access to the proper provided services. A cross-sectional analytical observational research with data collected from medical records by the speech therapist of each private facility. A written form was prepared and sent to the speech therapists of the 40 existing facilities. We received 124 of them from the pediatric group being assisted in 15 of the facilities. The form included questions about gender, age, vocal complaints; general degree of dysphonia; otorhinolaryngological diagnosis of vocal fold alterations; the age that the problem was identified by the parents and the beginning of speech therapy. The larynx was examined by videonasopharyngolaryngoscopy, and voice quality by auditory-perceptual assessment. The time period between the identification of the participant's dysphonia by the parents and the start of speech therapy was considered long (3.5years). The group showed variance in the proportion of nodule and cyst between genders. The highest prevalence of nodules occurred in boys; and the cyst in girls. Moderate general dysphonia occurred between 4 and 17years old, average age of 7years and 7months, with greater distribution between 5 and 10years of age. The average time delay until the start of speech therapy was 3.5years, more frequently in the 5-10years group and due to nodules in boys and cysts in girls.

Private speech amount positively predicts memory performance in young adults

This study used a card-matching game that relies on visual-spatial working memory to investigate whether the amount one talks out loud to themselves (referred to as private speech) predicts cognitive performance in young adults (n = 118, mean age = 20.13 years). Each participant's performance was measured in two “Private Speech” trials, in which they were instructed to complete the game efficiently, while using private speech as much as they can. Using multilevel modeling, we found that participants performed significantly better on trials for which they produced more private speech. This relationship was not moderated by baseline competency on the task (measured in a condition where participants were not instructed to use, and rarely ever used, private speech). The study shows that the degree to which adults use private speech — when instructed to do so, is associated with cognitive performance, which may have important implications for educational/instructional settings.

The Communication Patterns between Speech–Language Therapists and Parents/Guardians of Children with Developmental Language Disorders in Private Speech–Language Therapy in Cyprus

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) experience communication difficulties and receive speech–language therapy (SLT) services in public schools and/or private clinics in Cyprus. This study aims to analyze the context and content of communication between parents/guardians (P/Gs) and speech-language therapists (SLTs) in private practice. The conducted cross-sectional study utilized nonprobability convenience sampling to recruit P/Gs of children with DLD. Participants completed a questionnaire regarding their sociodemographic characteristics, the context of communication, topics discussed, and collaboration level with the SLTs. A total of 189 P/Gs participated, of which 84.1% were married, 79.4% were mothers, and 52.4% held at least a college/university degree. Mothers primarily communicated with SLTs in the setting, discussing their children’s performance, progress, behavior, difficulties, and homework. However, 48.7% felt well-informed, 47.1% fully understood their children’s goals, 55.6% received thorough briefings from SLTs, 51.3% observed at least a portion of the therapy session, and 77.8% received at least an adequate amount of homework. Additionally, 73.6% reported the use of technology during SLT, and 74.5% expressed good/great satisfaction with their children’s progress. Of the 31.1% reporting difficulties, 64.3% mentioned some difficulties related to homework completion and the children’s behavior. The proposed solutions included increased SLT briefings, training, and P/Gs observing therapy sessions.

A proposal for monitoring the process of internalization following Galperin's conception.

Since the era of Piaget and Vygotsky, private speech (PS) has been widely discussed, but in recent years, the avenues for its study have greatly expanded. In this study, we explored the use of a recoding scheme for PS inspired by the studies of Pyotr Galperin. A coding scheme of PS as the form of action (FA) has been proposed (i.e., external social speech, external audible speech, inaudible speech, and mental speech). An exploratory study was conducted to elucidate the appropriateness of the coding scheme both ontogenetically and during tasks. The results showed that both the coding scheme by type of speech and FA were adequate for differentiating ontogenetically between children. However, only the coding schemes of the FA were appropriate for differentiating between children as a function of their performance (i.e., time and scores) in a Tower of London task. Moreover, Galperin's scheme was more suitable when there was redundancy in performance between those with audible and inaudible external speech.

A newcomer’s spontaneous translanguaging in lower-secondary physics education

ABSTRACT Research indicates that encouraging translanguaging can enhance learning in a range of contexts. However, there are few studies examining translanguaging for learning among newcomers in science education. This case study fills this research gap by examining in what ways a newcomer to the school uses translanguaging practices with his classmate to participate more fully in a linguistically diverse physics classroom, where neither the teacher nor a majority of the students share the same home language. The data comprises transcriptions of video and audio recordings and photographs from nine physics lessons (students aged 14–15 years). Translanguaging practices 1 1 In this study the languages that students use in contexts beyond the classroom are called home languages. Here we draw on Eisenschlas and Schalley (2020) who argue that in reference to languages that “home” is “not the same as “house one lives in” (i.e. the physical space), and should be understood more broadly as referring to a “point of reference from which speakers navigate the world” (p. 34). were identified and analyzed from a sociocultural perspective. Benito, the newcomer, spontaneously used English, Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese and prior knowledge in creative ways in interactions with his classmate during pair work, something that was not possible in whole class instruction. Multilingual peer dialogue, multilingual private speech and the use of multilingual artifacts increased learning opportunities. Moreover, Benito and his classmate Edin engaged in exploratory talk and demonstrated metalinguistic awareness. This study indicates that teachers who actively facilitate the use of students' multiple linguistic resources for sensemaking can contribute to a more egalitarian education and increase opportunities for learning in linguistically diverse classrooms.

The Emotional Effects of Extended Breaks on Elementary Students in School Speech Therapy Programs


 With the COVID-19 pandemic drastically affecting everyone across the United States and the rest of the world, people of all ages have experienced, and continue to experience, a wide variety of social and emotional challenges. Unforeseen closures have subsequently affected people’s lives, across the globe. Many of these people rely on school, work, and a variety of other special programs for academic, financial, psychological, and emotional support. With lack to these support systems, many are left feeling lost and falling behind.
 Language delays are seen in 1.9 to 2.3 percent of children between the ages of two and seven years. (McLaughlin, 2011). With that being said, school speech therapy programs are essential to the success and development of students across the country; especially in cases where private speech therapy is not feasible. Although these programs have proven to be both necessary and important, very limited research have been done on the emotional effects of the specific methods in use.

Educational Implications of Private Speech for Children’s Problem-solving Abilities

This paper analyzes the educational implications of using private speech and discusses whether the instruction and guidance of private speech should be a practical teaching strategy for teachers at school and help students master more skills on how to solve multifaceted tasks. It is crucial to comprehend the definition and characteristics of private speech from the perspective of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories. According to the development trajectory of private speech, the frequency of using it varies with age, tasks, and literacy levels. This utterance is most prevalent from the age of 2 to 6 and declines when children enter elementary school; people are most likely to use private speech while doing tasks of medium difficulty level; adults who received more formal education and have higher literacy levels employ internalized private speech more frequently than those with lower literacy level. Additionally, private speech positively influences children’s executive functioning as well as task performance. Together, these benefits suggest that it is promising to apply scaffolding as a pedagogical method to encourage students to use private speech so that teachers can evaluate students’ competence scope. It is also important to construct supportive adult-children interactions for those with Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) to make more private speech with a purpose of improving executive functioning. Future studies about using private should focus more on classroom settings and examine the feasibility of encouraging students to use private speech while solving problems.

Autocommunication in crib speech and private speech

Abstract Autocommunication, communication with oneself, may become distinct from communication with an “other” both in form and function. Autocommunication has a special role in the development of thinking in small children, as differentiation of speech for oneself, known as “private speech,” from communication for social purposes entails the child’s organization of her or his own cognition and behavior with the aid of symbols. Recent studies have suggested that speech distinctly for the child him or herself is particularly observable during what is called “crib speech” and thus it appears to support already early language acquisition. The purpose and functions of crib speech in child development have been topics of interest until recently, but they are still debated. In autocommunication, instead of transfer of signs from one mind to another as when in communication with an “other,” there is transfer of signs from one state of mind to another, as in the case of recalling something with the help of signs. Next to this mnemonic type autocommunication, Juri Lotman was interested in the type in which textual devices within a text guide the communicative interpretation in relation to the text itself, particularly characteristic to poetry. The paper provides a semiotic analysis of crib speech in terms of Lotman’s concept of autocommunication explaining its particular appearance both in form and content, as well as what initiates and inspires it for the small child and why does it bring such joy. From the point of view of semiotics, crib speech presents as an exceptionally rich phenomenon. In addition to being small children’s language practice, crib speech appears as language play, if not poetry, serving as a modelling system for enacting and representing the world as it appears for the small child.

Artist’s Project: In Necessity and Sorry

Is it enough to speak about abortion in private? There is a paradox in asserting a political right so tied to the impulse to retreat to privacy. Privacy, although an important condition for living, has proven unable to protect abortion access in the United States. Privacy is also, in my experience, a fiction—especially when it comes to an act like abortion, which functions more like a discursive watering hole for so many speakers. The mixed media painting In Necessity and Sorry makes public the private speech involved in interpreting the events we call an abortion, such that it becomes a kind of public art. Conversely, it records the intense sociality already involved in this so-called private act.

The effects of private speech on the speaking proficiency of young Jordanian English as a Foreign Language students

This research examined how private speech affects the speaking ability competency in young Jordanian English as a Foreign Language students. The mixed-methods research gathered quantitative and qualitative data from 50 Jordanian EFL students aged 10-12. Pre- and post-tests of speaking skill mastery provided quantitative data, and observations and semi-structured interviews were also conducted to provide qualitative data. Private speech exercises significantly improved participants' speaking skills. Private speech improved participants' fluency, accuracy, and complexity. The qualitative data also showed that private speech helped individuals speak English with confidence and less nervousness. The research reveals that private speech exercises might help young Jordanian EFL students improve their speaking skills. EFL instructors and curriculum designers in Jordan may want to include private speech exercises to improve students' speaking and language abilities. Private speech activities should be studied in additional circumstances and age ranges.

Differentially Private Speaker Anonymization

Sharing real-world speech utterances is key to the training and deployment of voice-based services. However, it also raises privacy risks as speech contains a wealth of personal data. Speaker anonymization aims to remove speaker information from a speech utterance while leaving its linguistic and prosodic attributes intact. State-of-the-art techniques operate by disentangling the speaker information (represented via a speaker embedding) from these attributes and re-synthesizing speech based on the speaker embedding of another speaker. Prior research in the privacy community has shown that anonymization often provides brittle privacy protection, even less so any provable guarantee. In this work, we show that disentanglement is indeed not perfect: linguistic and prosodic attributes still contain speaker information. We remove speaker information from these attributes by introducing differentially private feature extractors based on an autoencoder and an automatic speech recognizer, respectively, trained using noise layers. We plug these extractors in the state-of-the-art anonymization pipeline and generate, for the first time, private speech utterances with a provable upper bound on the speaker information they contain. We evaluate empirically the privacy and utility resulting from our differentially private speaker anonymization approach on the LibriSpeech data set. Experimental results show that the generated utterances retain very high utility for automatic speech recognition training and inference, while being much better protected against strong adversaries who leverage the full knowledge of the anonymization process to try to infer the speaker identity.