Inner speech lies at the chaotic intersection of several difficult questions in contemporary philosophy and psychology. On the one hand, these episodes are private mental events. On the other, they resemble speech acts of the sort used in interpersonal communication. Inner speech episodes seem to constitute or express sophisticated trains of conceptual thought but, at the same time, they are motoric in nature and draw on sensorimotor mechanisms for speech production and perception more generally. By using inner speech, we seem to both regulate our bodily actions and gain a unique kind of access to our own beliefs and desires. Inner Speech: New Voices explores this familiar and yet mysterious element of our daily lives, bringing together contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In response to renewed interest in the general connections between thought, language, and consciousness, these leading thinkers develop a number of important new theories, raise questions about the nature of inner speech and its cognitive functions, and debate the current controversies surrounding the 'little voice in the head.'

electrical activity during thinking, both with and without verbalization and the use of language. Although seemingly simple, these experiments tackle a very complex subject with which psychologists, linguists, and others are only beginning to come to grips. Sokolov and his group have succeeded admirably in splitting the subject apart by driving in the wedges of objective measurement and unique experimental formulations. Chapter IX dips into the neurology and neurophysiology of motor speech and its feedback mechanisms and the dynamic localization and organization of the cerebral mechanisms responsible for symbolic formulation of speech and thought. The bibliography brings together a considerable number of Russian publications on this subject, as well as some of the pertinent American and European literature. This book is a welcome addition to an important field. Donald B. Lindsley Professor, Departments of Psychology, Physiology, and Psychiatry, and Member of the Brain Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles Contents Introduction .......................................... . Part One GENERAL PROBLEMS OF STUDY Chapter I Theories of the Interrelation of Speech and Thought ............... 11 Chapter II The Problem of Inner Speech in Psychology ..................... 34 l. Early Investigations of Inner Speech ..................... 34 2. Discussion of Inner-Speech in Soviet Psychology ............ 46 3. Verbal Interference Methods in the Study of Inner Speech ..... 52 4. Detecting Concealed Speech Reactions by Conditioned-Reflex Methods ........................................ 58 5. Conditioned Reflexes to Numbers ...................... 61 6. Clinical Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 . . . . . . . .

According to Vygotsky (1986), The decreasing vocalization of egocentric speech denotes a developing abstraction from sound, the child's new faculty to "think words" instead of pronouncing them. This is the positive meaning of the sinking coefficient of egocentric speech. The downward curve indicates development toward inner speech, (p. 230) The purpose of this volume is to explore the faculty to "think words," not as the ability to mentally evoke words in the native (or first) language (LI) but as the faculty 1 to conjure up in the mind words in a second language (L2). To think words rather than to pronounce them is possible through inner speech, a function that humans develop in the course of childhood as they internalize the speech of the social group among which they grow. This means internalizing and being able to conduct inner speech in a particular linguistic code, the LI. But humans, at a very early or more mature age, may also come into contact and interact verbally with speakers of other languages, in classrooms or natural settings. The possibility thus emerges of internalizing an L2 in such a way that inner speech in the L2 might evolve. In this book, it is argued that, given certain conditions of L2 learning, it is possible for learners to attain inner speech in the L2. This book examines the distinctive nature of L2 inner speech and the processes that engender it and characterize its development.

Inner speech, also known as self-talk, is distinct from ordinary language. It has several functions and structures, from everyday thinking and self-regulation to stream of consciousness and daydreaming. Inner Speech and the Dialogical Self provides a comprehensive analysis of this internal conversation that people have with themselves to think about problems, clarify goals, and guide their way through life. Norbert Wiley shrewdly emphasizes the semiotic and dialogical features of the inner speech, rather than the biological and neurological issues. He also examines people who lack control of their inner speech—such as some autistics and many emotionally disturbed people who use trial and error rather than self-control—to show the power and effectiveness of inner speech. Inner Speech and the Dialogical Self takes a humanistic social theorist approach to its topic. Wiley acknowledges the contributions of inner speech theorists, Lev Vygotsky and Mikhail Bakhtin, and addresses the classical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead to show the range and depth of this largely unexplored field.

We live immersed in thought. But do we actually know what a thought is? To answer this question, psychology professor Charles Fernyhough draws on everything from neuroscience to literary history to grasp the true nature of this most inscrutable of acts: thinking. Whether a medieval saint who hears voices or a writer absorbed in an imagined world, a daydreamer riding the subway or a captivated reader, we experience thought as a creative inner dialogue featuring multiple voices. Fernyhough uses this conception to demystify mental illness, showing that imagining voices is intimately linked to the feeling of artistic production. Drawing on literature, film, and psychology, as well as cognitive science, The Voices Within is a poetic venture into the depths of our mind. It will revolutionize the way we hear and understand the voices in our heads.

You live your entire waking life immersed in your inner experiences (thoughts, feelings, sensations and so on) – private phenomena created by you, just for you, your own way. Despite their intimacy and ubiquity, you probably do not know the characteristics of your own inner phenomena; neither does psychology or consciousness science. Investigating Pristine Inner Experience explores how to apprehend inner experience in high fidelity. This book will transform your view of your own inner experience, awaken you to experiential differences between people and thereby reframe your thinking about psychology and consciousness science, which banned the study of inner experience for most of a century and yet continued to recognize its fundamental importance. The author, a pioneer in using beepers to explore inner experience, draws on his 35 years of studies to provide fascinating and provocative views of everyday inner experience and experience in bulimia, adolescence, the elderly, schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome, virtuosity and more.

Whereas most humans spend their time trying to get things right, psycholo gists are perversely dedicated to error. Errors are extensively used to in vestigate perception, memory, and performance; some clinicians study errors like tea leaves for clues to unconscious motives; and this volume presents the work of researchers who, in an excess of perversity, actually cause people to make predictable errors in speech and action. Some reasons for this oddity are clear. Errors seem to stand at the nexus of many deep-psychological questions. The very concept of error presupposes a goal or criterion by comparison to which an error is an error; and goals bring in the foundation issues of control, motivation, and volition (Baars, 1987, 1988; Wiener, 1961). Errors serve to measure the quality of performance in learning, in expert knowledge, and in brain damage and other dysfunctional states; and by surprising us, they often call attention to phenomena we might otherwise take for granted. Errors also seem to reveal the "natural joints" in perception, language, memory, and problem solving-revealing units that may otherwise be invisible (e. g. , MacKay, 1981; Miller, 1956; Newell & Simon, 1972; Treisman & Gelade, 1980).