The neuroimaging and neurophysiological literature on inner speech in healthy participants and those who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) is reviewed. AVH-hearers in remission and controls do not differ neurologically on tasks involving low levels of verbal self-monitoring (VSM), such as reciting sentences in inner speech. In contrast, on tasks involving high levels of VSM, such...

We distinguish two general approaches to inner speech (IS)-the "format" and the "activity" views-and defend the activity view. The format view grounds the utility of IS on features of the representational format of language, and is related to the thesis that the proper function of IS is to make conscious thinking possible. IS appears typically as a product constituted by representations of phon...

This paper has two themes. One is the question of how to understand the relation between inner speech and knowledge of one’s own thoughts. My aim here is to probe and challenge the popular neo-Rylean suggestion that we know our own thoughts by ‘overhearing our own silent monologues’, and to sketch an alternative suggestion, inspired by Ryle’s lesser-known discussion of thinking as a ‘serial ope...

Is self-directed speech critical to cognitive processes supporting complex, goal-directed behavior? If so, how? An influential developmental hypothesis is that children talk to themselves to support cognitive control processes, and that with age this speech becomes increasingly covert and strategic. However, while many studies suggest language supports cognitive control, evidence that self-dire...

Unsymbolized thinking--the experience of an explicit, differentiated thought that does not include the experience of words, images, or any other symbols--is a frequently occurring yet little known phenomenon. Unsymbolized thinking is a distinct phenomenon, not merely, for example, an incompletely formed inner speech or a vague image, and is one of the five most common features of inner experien...

We know from everyday experience that when we need to keep a small amount of verbal information "in mind" for a short period, an effective cognitive strategy is to silently rehearse the words. This basic cognitive strategy has been elegantly codified in Baddeley and colleagues model of verbal working memory, the phonological loop. Here we explore how the intuitive appeal of the phonological loo...

Although copious research has investigated the role of phonology in reading, little research has investigated the precise nature of the entailed speech representations. The present study examined the similarity of "inner speech" in reading to overt speech. Two lexical decision experiments (in which participants gave speeded word/nonword classifications to letter strings) assessed the effects of...