Psych202 - Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience
Lecture 16 - Inner speech
Overview of Inner Speech
● Broad Definition – “silent” speech experience in the mind - (vs. out loud)
● Shared by many (not all); occupies ~25% of waking life - based on self-reported survey
● Interacts with cognition (memory, reading, problem-solving) and consciousness (thinking about the
self)
● Dysfunction in mental disorders (rumination, auditory verbal hallucinations) remains theoretical;
exact mechanisms (e.g. misattribution of inner speech) are not understood.
Theories of Inner Speech
● Speech with attenuated articulation
○ It does not explain the self-regulatory functions of inner speech
● Internalised speech by complex transformation
○ Emphasises roles of private/self-talk and language development
● Part of the phonological loop and phonological store in working memory
Methodological considerations
● Intrinsically difficult to study
● Questionnaires
○ Lack of validity and reliability
● Experience Sampling
○ Offline measure
● Phonological judgements
○ Not naturalistic
● Instructed imagery
○ Different from spontaneous inner speech
The corollary discharge model of inner speech
Rhyme Judgements
● Speech production areas are engaged by rhyme judgements
Requires
phonological
activation
“inner speech”
Does not
require
phonological
activation
Speech production areas
● Speech production areas are engaged by imagining talking to oneself
● Two phases:
○ Listen - participants hear a spoken word (e.g. coffee)
, ○ Imagine - then silently articulate a sentence or imagine it being said in 1st person vs. 2nd
person
● See the written word and a picture
● Silently explain the definition of the presented word, beginning with: “This is something…”
Motor parts activation
● Inner Speech Activates Motor Parts of the Speech
Network
● Consistent evidence for some form of articulatory
planning in inner speech
● cf. the rehearsal mechanism in WM
Inner speech as corollary discharge
McGurk Illusion
● The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing
and vision in speech perception.
● The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component
of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound.
● The sensation of /ga-ga/ as predicted from the mouth movements is a corollary discharge
How to observe/capture corollary discharge?
● Your voice sounds different from a recording
○ The sound you produce is attenuated by your inner speech when you hear it back
● You notice when you make a speech error
○ The sound you produce is checked against an internal prediction to check it is produced
correctly
Lecture 16 - Inner speech
Overview of Inner Speech
● Broad Definition – “silent” speech experience in the mind - (vs. out loud)
● Shared by many (not all); occupies ~25% of waking life - based on self-reported survey
● Interacts with cognition (memory, reading, problem-solving) and consciousness (thinking about the
self)
● Dysfunction in mental disorders (rumination, auditory verbal hallucinations) remains theoretical;
exact mechanisms (e.g. misattribution of inner speech) are not understood.
Theories of Inner Speech
● Speech with attenuated articulation
○ It does not explain the self-regulatory functions of inner speech
● Internalised speech by complex transformation
○ Emphasises roles of private/self-talk and language development
● Part of the phonological loop and phonological store in working memory
Methodological considerations
● Intrinsically difficult to study
● Questionnaires
○ Lack of validity and reliability
● Experience Sampling
○ Offline measure
● Phonological judgements
○ Not naturalistic
● Instructed imagery
○ Different from spontaneous inner speech
The corollary discharge model of inner speech
Rhyme Judgements
● Speech production areas are engaged by rhyme judgements
Requires
phonological
activation
“inner speech”
Does not
require
phonological
activation
Speech production areas
● Speech production areas are engaged by imagining talking to oneself
● Two phases:
○ Listen - participants hear a spoken word (e.g. coffee)
, ○ Imagine - then silently articulate a sentence or imagine it being said in 1st person vs. 2nd
person
● See the written word and a picture
● Silently explain the definition of the presented word, beginning with: “This is something…”
Motor parts activation
● Inner Speech Activates Motor Parts of the Speech
Network
● Consistent evidence for some form of articulatory
planning in inner speech
● cf. the rehearsal mechanism in WM
Inner speech as corollary discharge
McGurk Illusion
● The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing
and vision in speech perception.
● The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component
of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound.
● The sensation of /ga-ga/ as predicted from the mouth movements is a corollary discharge
How to observe/capture corollary discharge?
● Your voice sounds different from a recording
○ The sound you produce is attenuated by your inner speech when you hear it back
● You notice when you make a speech error
○ The sound you produce is checked against an internal prediction to check it is produced
correctly
