This paper presents a systematic review of the empirical literature that uses dual-task interference methods for investigating the on-line involvement of language in various cognitive tasks. In these studies, participants perform some primary task X putatively recruiting linguistic resources while also engaging in a secondary, concurrent task.If performance on the primary task decreases under interference, there is evidence for language involvement in the primary task. We assessed studies (N = 101) reporting at least one experiment with verbal interference and at least one control task (either primary or secondary). We excluded papers with an explicitly clinical, neurological, or developmental focus. The primary tasks identified include categorization, memory, mental arithmetic, motor control, reasoning (verbal and visuospatial), task switching, theory of mind, visual change, and visuospatial integration and wayfinding. Overall, the present review found that internal language is likely to play a facilitative role in memory and categorization when items to be remembered or categorized have readily available labels, when inner speech can act as a form of behavioral self-cuing (inhibitory control, task set reminders, verbal strategy), and when inner speech is plausibly useful as "workspace", e.g., for mental arithmetic. There is less evidence for the role of internal language in cross-modal integration, reasoning relying on a high degree of visual detail or items low on nameability, and theory of mind. We discuss potential pitfalls and suggestions for streamlining and improving the methodology.
In two preregistered experiments, we investigated whether people were less able to push themselves physically when distracted from using their internal language. In both experiments, participants performed 12 cycling trials (Experiment 1: N = 49; Experiment 2: N = 50), each lasting one minute where participants were required to cycle as fast as possible while engaging in either a visuospatial task, a verbal task or with no interference. Participants performed worse in the verbal interference condition compared with the control condition (Experiment 1: d’ = 0.29; Experiment 2: d’ = 1). Verbal interference was also significantly worse than visuospatial interference in Experiment 2 (d = 0.43) but only numerically worse in Experiment 1 (d’ = 0.29). These differences were likely due to a more demanding interference task format in Experiment 2. These experiments indicate that the inner voice plays an important role in top-down control of sustained physical efforts.
In this paper, we aimed to test whether we could predict sport type (badminton or running) and marathon proficiency from the valence, form, and content of the athletes’ self-reported inner speech. Additionally, we wanted to assess the difference between self-talk during high intensity and low intensity exercise. The present study corroborated existing research – we were able to predict both sport type in Study 1 and intensity level as well as marathon proficiency in Study 2 from questionnaire data using machine learning models. In Study 1, we found that badminton players engage more in worry and anxiety-control while runners are more prone to task disengagement. Interestingly, it seemed in Study 2 that the more participants engaged in condensed, positive, and repetitive self-talk when not pushing themselves, the slower their fastest marathons and half marathons were. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and make suggestions for future research.
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