Motor movement matters: The flexible abstractness of inner speech

By Gary M. Oppenheim, Gary S. Dell. 2010

141 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Inner speech is typically characterized as either the activation of abstract linguistic representations or a detailed articulatory simulation that lacks only the production of sound. We present a study of the speech errors that occur during the inner recitation of tongue-twister-like phrases. Two forms of inner speech were tested: inner speech without articulatory movements and articulated (mouthed) inner speech. Although mouthing one’s inner speech could reasonably be assumed to require more articulatory planning, prominent theories assume that such planning should not affect the experience of inner speech and, consequently, the errors that are “heard” during its production. The errors occurring in articulated inner speech exhibited the phonemic similarity effect and the lexical bias effect—two speech-error phenomena that, in overt speech, have been localized to an articulatory-feature-processing level and a lexical—phonological level, respectively. In contrast, errors in unarticulated inner speech did not exhibit the phonemic similarity effect—just the lexical bias effect. The results are interpreted as support for a flexible abstraction account of inner speech. This conclusion has ramifications for the embodiment of language and speech and for the theories of speech production.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Natural Language Processing

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough
3. J. V. Van Raalte

In Social Psychology

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough
3. Andrew Vincent
4. B. Brewer
5. J. V. Van Raalte
6. Simon McCarthy-Jones
7. Simon R. Jones
8. E. Meins

In Natural Language Processing

1. Ben Alderson-Day
2. Charles Fernyhough

Citations in the corpus

• Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology (2015, methodology): “While there exists a range of theoretical perspectives on inner speech (e.g., Larrain & Haye, 2012; Morin, 2005; Oppenheim & Dell, 2010), two in particular have proved influential for theorizing about its cognitive functions.”
• How do forward models work? And why would you want them? (2013, unknown): “For instance, inner slips tend to create words, just like their overt counterparts (Corley et al. 2011; Oppenheim & Dell 2008; 2010), and their distributions resemble overt slips in other ways (Dell 1978; Postma & Noordanus 1996).”
• Self-talk: Review and sport-specific model (2016, background): “That is, self- talk may be overtly spoken aloud, mouthed but not sp ken, or completely internal (Hardy, 2006; Oppenheim & Dell, 2010).”