Private speech on an executive task: relations with task difficulty and task performance

By Charles Fernyhough, Emma Fradley. 2005

242 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Measures of private speech and task performance were obtained for a sample of 46 5- and 6-year-olds engaged on a mechanical version of the Tower of London (ToL) task. Two different sets of four puzzles of increasing difficulty were attempted on two occasions. In line with Vygotskian predictions, there was a quadratic relation between private speech and task difficulty, but no evidence of a shift towards self-regulatory sub-types of private speech with increasing task difficulty. Levels of self-regulatory private speech were significantly related to concurrent, but not subsequent, task performance. We discuss the significance of these findings for the Vygotskian view that private speech has an adaptive function in the self-regulation of behaviour.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education, Cognitive Science & Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology (2015, methodology): “Private speech on such tasks has been observed to increase in relation to task difficulty in children (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005) and correlates with other indicators of verbal strategy use, such as susceptibility to the phonological similarity effect on STM tasks (Al-Namlah et al., 2006).”
Individual differences in children's private speech: the role of imaginary companions. (2013, unknown): “Children’s use of private speech has been shown to be positively associated with their performance on a range of cognitive tasks, including planning (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005) and puzzle solving (Winsler, Diaz, McCarthy, Atencio, & Adams Chabay, 1999).”
Language and Executive Functions: The Effect of Articulatory Suppression on Executive Functioning in Children (2012, background): “In regard to the second category of tasks with medium memory demands, observational studies on planning showed that spontaneous private speech already occurs in 5-year-olds, that it becomes increasingly internalized with growing age, and that the frequency of its spontaneous use varies as a function”
The discursive nature of inner speech (2012, background): “…(1926/1962) and Vygotsky’s (1934/1999) works on egocentric speech, there have been many empirical studies on private speech and self-regulation (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Fernyhough & Russell, 1997; Goudena, 1987; Luria, 1982; Rommetveit & Blakar, 1979; Wertsch & Stone, 1985), neurological…”
Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation, dialogue, and the development of social understanding (2008, unknown): “Rather, my focus will be on how intentional-agent understanding(6) is converted into richer forms of SU. My arguments will draw on Tomasello et al.’s (1993) distinction between three levels at which a thinker can hold a conception of a person.”
The Importance of Play (2007, background): “research within developmental psychology, and Vygotsky’s view has been consistently supported (Winsler and Naglieri, 2003; Fernyhough and Fradley, 2005).”
Self-awareness deficits following loss of inner speech: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's case study. (2009, unknown): “1 Although this paper specifically emphasizes the reminded here that inner speech serves various addit (see Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Fuson, 1979; Vygo (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), task switching performance (Meacham, 1979).”
Brief Report: Further Evidence for Inner Speech Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorders (2009, unknown): “In a study of TD 5–6 year olds, Fernyhough and Fradley (2005) reported that private speech was positively correlated with tower performance.”
Private Speech in Illiterate Adults: Cognitive Functions, Task Difficulty, and Literacy (2013, background): “This finding is consistent with the Vygotskian hypothesis of the progressive differentiation of speech functions that has been strongly supported by empirical research conducted with children (Berk and Garvin 1984; Fernyhough and Fradley 2005; Winsler et al. 2006, 2007; Winsler and Naglieri 2003).”
Private Speech and Executive Functioning among High-Functioning Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (2007, unknown): “…that PS (a) appears systematically during moments of cognitive challenge and/or situations which require executive or self-regulatory functioning (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Winsler & Diaz, 1995), (b) undergoes a developmental transition from being more overt, elaborate, and task-irrelevant, to…”
Verbal mediation of cognition in children with specific language impairment (2012, unknown): “…tasks and their performance of those tasks, in the areas of general problem solving (Behrend, Rosengren, & Perlmutter, 1989, 1992), executive function (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Müller, Zelazo, Hood, Leone, & Rohrer, 2004; Winsler, Diaz, & Montero, 1997), and schoolwork (Bivens & Berk, 1990).”
Individual differences in children's private speech: Consistency across tasks, timepoints, and contexts (2011, background): “…& Perlmutter, 1989; Duncan & Pratt, 1997; Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Kohlberg, Yaeger, & Hjertholm, 1968), and its production is associated with success on a variety of tasks (Behrend, Rosengren, & Perlmutter, 1992; Bivens & Berk, 1990; Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005; Winsler, Diaz, & Montero, 1997).”
The roles of private speech and inner speech in planning during middle childhood: evidence from a dual task paradigm. (2010, background): “The results of Experiment 2 support those of Fernyhough and Fradley (2005), Al-Namlah et al. (2006), and Wallace et al. (2009) in suggesting that planning is achieved with the aid of self-directed speech.”