Private Speech

Private speech (also known as private dialogue, selftalk, collective monologue, noncommunicative speech, or egocentric speech) is speech that is directed to the self and not to others. Private speech serves as a tool for thinking that facilitates problem solving and is also a tool that mediates people's self-regulatory capacity. John Flavell coined the term private speech in 1964 as a means of distinguishing Lev Vygotsky's understanding of this phenomenon from the interpretation given to us earlier by Jean Piaget. The earliest documentation of egocentric speech surfaced in the 1920s by Piaget. He observed young children playing together while emitting verbal monologues without any apparent concern for the listener. The children appeared to be unable to take the perspective of the listener into account and instead were verbalizing their thoughts on two very separate topics. Jean Piaget reasoned that these collective monologues were evidence of children's cognitive and social limitations. These limitations caused young children to converse in an egocentric manner. Piaget reasoned that such speech was evidence of immature social or communicative speech.

Soon after, Vygotsky became aware of Piaget's observations and offered another interpretation for this so-called egocentric speech. Vygotsky believed that private speech was a qualitatively distinct type of speech directed to the self and provided specific functions to individuals rather than a communicative function with others. This self-talk was a mediational means by which young children are able to collaborate with themselves to solve tasks, motivate themselves toward attaining goals, and regulate their behavior. Vygotsky argued that egocentric speech was actually a tool for thinking and represented the point in development when two functionally separate systems, developing parallel with each other, converge, thus allowing our thought system to become verbal and our speech system to become rational. Vygotsky also believed that this new qualitatively distinct form of speech was essentially overt inner speech. Private speech is the precursor to covert verbal thought and, with time, goes “underground” to form inner speech.

It is important to understand the role that this developmental phenomenon plays in children's development of self-regulation. Vygotsky suggested that private speech was the means by which higher psychological processes like voluntary control and voluntary attention develop in young children. There exists a significant body of empirical literature that supports Vygotsky's view of private speech as a tool of thought, and there is an emerging body of literature that also supports Vygotsky's view that private speech is the basis of people's motivations.

Contemporary research has shown that private speech plays a critical role in the transition from external social regulation to internal, autonomous self-regulation. Private speech emerges soon after children are able to engage in social, communicative speech. Once children are able to communicate, they begin to communicate with themselves as a means of [Page 815]planning, guiding, and orchestrating their cognitions and actions. Research has shown that children begin to use private speech at approximately 2 years of age and increase their use to about 5 to 6 years of age. After the age of 6 or 7, private speech diminishes as children are able to engage in dialogue with themselves covertly. Although it was once thought that private speech would disappear after the age of 7 or 8, current research on older children and adults has shown that it emerges relative to task demand and individual's need to self-organize and self-direct thoughts, motivations, and actions.

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