Individual differences in children's private speech: Consistency across tasks, timepoints, and contexts

Children often talk themselves through their activities. They produce private speech (PS), which is internalized to form inner speech (silent verbal thought). Twenty-five 8-10-year-olds completed four tasks in a laboratory context (Tower of London, digit span, and two measures of spatial IQ). PS production was recorded. Eleven months later, the same participants completed the Tower of London and academic numeracy tasks, again in a laboratory context, as well as numeracy tasks in a classroom context. Rates of PS production and its level of internalization showed large positive correlations across time, tasks, and contexts. The results are interpreted in terms of the psychometric properties of PS production and are taken as evidence for the development of a domain-general system for verbal self-regulation in childhood.     

The effects of autonomy-supportive versus controlling environments on self-talk

Based within a self-determination theory framework (SDT: Deci and Ryan, Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behaviour. Plenum Publishing Co., New York, 1985), the present study examined the effects of manipulating social-contextual conditions on the content of individuals’ self-talk. Seventy student volunteers were randomly assigned to a controlling or autonomy-supportive experimental condition. Participants were instructed to ‘think-aloud’ throughout a 10-min computerized task during which self-verbalizations were recorded. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim, and then analysed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Program (LIWC; Pennebaker et al., LIWC2001; Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (software and manual). Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, 2001). Inductive content analyses were also conducted. Triangulation of the quantitative and qualitative findings revealed that in the autonomy-supportive condition, individuals’ self-talk was more informational and less controlling, with participants using more positive emotional words and assents, and fewer negative emotional words, swear words, and first person references than in the controlling condition. The findings suggest that social-context can affect cognitive factors such as self-talk and further support the promotion of autonomy-supportive environments.     

The Role of Self-Focus,Task Difficulty,Task Self-Relevance,and Evaluation Anxiety in Reaction Time Performance

Self-focused attention has been found to facilitate task performance in some instances and inhibit it in others. Among chronically anxious individuals it appears to consistently hinder performance. Less is known about the impact of self-focus on the performance of normal individuals. The present study examines the role of task difficulty, task self-relevance, and presence of evaluation anxiety in the performance effects of self-focus among normal individuals. Participants performed a simple reaction time (RT) and a lexical decision task, in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, with or without self-focus. Self-focus and evaluation anxiety resulted in faster responding in simple RT, but there was no significant effect of self-focus on performance in the more difficult lexical decision task. Participants' heart rate (HR) was monitored and indicated that orienting was associated with slower RT in both experiments, and less orienting was found during self-focus and evaluation conditions. Results are interpreted in light of several self-focus theories.     

Wittgenstein and contemporary theories of word learning

Wittgenstein's positions on word learning, rules of use, and the impossibility of a private language, as expounded in his Philosophical Investigations, are examined in relation to issues of early child word learning. Current theoretical positions in the cognitivist mode are contrasted with the social cultural pragmatic approach, and each is compared to the principles that Wittgenstein advanced. Bloom's [(2000). How children learn the meanings of words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] version of the cognitivist theory rejects most of the principles that Wittgenstein advanced, relying on innate cognitive endowments to explain children's success in word learning, using the word-referent mapping paradigm. Nelson's “use without meaning” and Tomasello's [(2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press] social-pragmatic model of learning from use are presented as representative of Wittgensteinian principles that meaning exists in and is inferred from the uses of words within communal activities (“language games” in “forms of life”).     

Depression,self-focus,and social interaction

The accuracy of depressed and nondepressed subjects' perceptions of their own and a social interactional partner's performance was investigated. Twenty depressed and twenty nondepressed college students participated in dyadic interactions and then rated their own and their partner's social behavior. The interactions were also rated by objective coders. Depressed subjects were differentiated from nondepressed subjects on several measures by both the coders and the subjects. Depressed subjects' self-ratings were correlated with the coders' ratings more often than were the nondepressives' ratings, suggesting depressives provided more accurate self-observations. Contrary to prediction, depressives were also more accurate in judging their partner's behavior. Depressives experienced heightened levels of self-focused attention, but this attentional focus did not mediate the relationship between depression level and self-accuracy. Finally, an analysis of the verbal statements suggests that performance differences between depressives and nondepressives may be a function of the quantity, rather than the quality, of the verbal production.     

In search of psychoticism: Some conclusions revised

Two reports of a substantial relationship between Psychoticism, as measured by the E.P.Q. P-scale, and the trait of Impulsiveness prompted a reanalysis of data, part of which had already formed the basis for the conclusion that individual differences in measured Psychoticism could best be accounted for in terms of the trait of Conformity. The inclusion of Impulsiveness as a variable in the reference set leads to the conclusion that most of the variance of Psychoticism can indeed be accounted for in terms of Impulsiveness, although Conformity still makes a non-trivial contribution.     

Public and private communication are different: results on relative expressivity

Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) is the study of how to reason about knowledge, belief, and communication. This paper studies the relative expressivity of certain fragments of the DEL language for public and private communication. It is shown that the language of public communication with common knowledge and the language of private communication with common knowledge are expressively incomparable for the class of all pointed Kripke models, which provides a formal proof that public and private communication are fundamentally different in the presence of common knowledge. It is also shown that single-recipient private communication does not add expressive power to the language of modal logic with common knowledge for any class of transitive pointed Kripke models. The latter result provides a sense in which positive introspection—believing our own beliefs—induces a kind of self-dialog.     

Reason and revelation: Kant and the problem of authority

This paper explores the significance of authority for Kant’s understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation. Beginning with the separation of the faculties of Theology and Philosophy in Conflict, it will be shown that Kant sees a clear distinction between the authority of reason and that of revelation. However, when one turns to Religion, it is also clear that Kant sees an important, perhaps necessary, relationship between the two. Drawing on a variety of texts, in particular those concerning the public and private use of reason, this paper then explores the relationship between the authority of reason and that of revelation. From this discussion, several conclusions will be drawn regarding Kant’s understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation, namely that while distinct, the two are not necessarily in conflict and that, ultimately, the proper functioning of public reason must include some reference to revelation.     

The Effects of Acute Alcohol Intoxication and Self-Focused Rumination on Triggered Displaced Aggression

An experiment simultaneously examined the effects of acute alcohol intoxication and self-focused rumination on triggered displaced aggression. An ethnically diverse sample of 97 young adult participants (41 men, 56 women) were recruited from a university community and surrounding area. Participants were provoked by an experimenter, randomly assigned to a 2 (alcohol, sober)?×?2 (rumination, distraction)?×?2 (trigger, no trigger) between-participants design, and then given an opportunity to aggress against an undeserving other who was either completely innocent or slightly annoying. Self-focused rumination increased displaced aggression only when participants were triggered by the slightly annoying participant. Alcohol independently augmented aggression.