Since the publication of Vygotsky’s Thought and Language in the United States, a number of North American and European investigators have conducted systematic observations of children’s spontaneous private speech, giving substantial support to Vygotsky’s major hypotheses — particularly those regarding the social origins of higher psychological functions. However, there still remain many vital questions about the origins, significance, and functions of private speech: How can social and private speech be validly differentiated? What kinds of social interactions promote the use of private speech? What are the sources of individual differences in the use of private speech? This unique volume addresses these and many other important questions. Characterized by a strong emphasis on original data, it reports on systematic observations of spontaneous private speech in children and adults in both laboratory and naturalistic settings. In addition to its systematic analysis of common methodological problems in the field, the book contains the most comprehensive bibliography of the private speech literature currently available.

This text will be an essential volume for those interested in the interface between language, cognition, and behavior.

Since the publication of Vygotsky’s Thought and Language in the United States, a number of North American and European investigators have conducted systematic observations of children’s spontaneous private speech, giving substantial support to Vygotsky’s major hypotheses — particularly those regarding the social origins of higher psychological functions. However, there still remain many vital questions about the origins, significance, and functions of private speech: How can social and private speech be validly differentiated? What kinds of social interactions promote the use of private speech? What are the sources of individual differences in the use of private speech? This unique volume addresses these and many other important questions. Characterized by a strong emphasis on original data, it reports on systematic observations of spontaneous private speech in children and adults in both laboratory and naturalistic settings. In addition to its systematic analysis of common methodological problems in the field, the book contains the most comprehensive bibliography of the private speech literature currently available.

Written by renowned basic and clinical scientist, Raymond D. Kent, the Handbook on Children’s Speech: Development, Disorders, and Variations provides comprehensive and systematic coverage of the topic of how speech develops and how it can be disordered or otherwise, a departure from typical patterns of a mainstream dialect. The book emphasizes relevant biology and psychology of speech development; contemporary models of spoken language; typical speech development; bilingualism and dialect; motor learning and motor control; clinical assessments of articulation, phonology, voice, prosody, and intelligibility; populations in which speech disorders and differences often occur; and methods and strategies for prevention and treatment. The Handbook covers both speech development and pediatric speech disorders focusing on the ages of birth to puberty. Because speech disorders in children occur against a complex developmental background, the understanding of these disorders requires knowledge about how speech develops and how it is affected in children with disorders or with exposure to languages other than American English. A major theme of the book is that speech development is a constructive, goal-directed phenomenon that weaves together several different processes having their own individual trajectories that generally reach maturity only in puberty or adolescence. For clinicians, researchers, and students, this book will serve as a valuable compendium of the many different tools and methods that have been developed to study speech development in diverse populations and to assess and treat speech disorders and variations.

This book is a compilation of theoretical and empirical advances related to the phenomenon of inner speech in education, and is aimed at academics and researchers in the area of psychology, education and culture. Inner speech has been a focus of multidisciplinary interest. It is a long-standing phenomenon of study in philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. Researchers from different disciplines have turned their efforts to understand this inherent experience of being "talking to oneself". In psychology, Vygotsky managed to develop a complete description of the phenomenon, giving rise to a great line of research related to inner speech in the human experience. This book derives from an international research program, related to cultural psychology, socio-constructivism, developmental psychology and education. It opens the door for new debates and emerging ideas.

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.'

This title was first published in 2000. This text presents a two-volume collection of theoretical articles on the topic of freedom of speech. The articles have all been written since the early 1970s. The first volume begins with an encyclopaedia entry, functioning as an overview of the topic, and further articles deal with justificatory theories of freedom of speech, the scope of the First Amendment, the value of free speech, communication control in law and society, and what kinds of acts raise freedom of speech concerns. The second volume turns to doctrinal theories, examining insults, incitements and governmental subsidies. Areas addressed include distinctions between content regulations, Robert Post's concepts of the public forum and public discourse and their bearing on free speech doctrine, and the significant arena for free speech controversies in the future.