Motor movement matters: The flexible abstractness of inner speech

Abstract

Inner speech is typically characterized as either the activation of abstract linguistic representations or a detailed articulatory simulation that lacks only the production of sound. We present a study of the speech errors that occur during the inner recitation of tongue-twister-like phrases. Two forms of inner speech were tested: inner speech without articulatory movements and articulated (mouthed) inner speech. Although mouthing one's inner speech could reasonably be assumed to require more articulatory planning, prominent theories assume that such planning should not affect the experience of inner speech and, consequently, the errors that are "heard" during its production. The errors occurring in articulated inner speech exhibited the phonemic similarity effect and the lexical bias effect-two speech-error phenomena that, in overt speech, have been localized to an articulatoryfeature-processing level and a lexical-phonological level, respectively. In contrast, errors in unarticulated inner speech did not exhibit the phonemic similarity effect-just the lexical bias effect. The results are interpreted as support for a flexible abstraction account of inner speech. This conclusion has ramifications for the embodiment of language and speech and for the theories of speech production.

How do speakers coordinate? Evidence for prediction in a joint word-replacement task

“…Similarly, when observing a signed utterance that ended in a semantically unexpected sign, German signers showed an enhanced N400 effect whose onset began before the onset of the sign itself, during the transition from the previous sign (Hosemann, Herrmann, Steinbach, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, & Schlesewsky, 2013). This suggests that activation of the language production system might be involved in (Corley, Brocklehurst, & Moat, 2011), whereas others maintain a more abstractionist view in which inner speech is specified only up to the phonological level (Oppenheim & Dell, 2010). But it is also possible that inhibition can occur at an even earlier stage (e.g., before or during lexical selection).…”

Inner speech captures the perception of external speech

“…In fact, inner speech exists on a continuum of articulator engagement: From "mouthing," where the articulators are moving fully (but silently), to "pure imagery" where the articulators remain still. 14 The strength of perceptual capture is not predicted to be equivalent in these two forms of inner speech, however. Because the motor system generates corollary discharge, we expect that greater motor engagement should trigger corollary discharge more strongly, predicting that perceptual capture should be stronger in mouthed than in pure speech imagery.…”

“…14 It is an open question whether this subphonemic content consists of a sensory or phonological (featural) representation. We follow Oppenheim and Dell in referring to subphonemic content in inner speech, keeping in mind that the corollary discharge literature would refer to this content as "sensory."…”

Lexical selection and verbal self-monitoring: Effects of lexicality, context, and time pressure in picture-word interference

“…In this paper, we will claim that previous work has not considered the possible role of a device that is already in place in normal speech production, namely the verbal self-monitor. That is, the speech production literature has considered the possible effects monitoring has on the patterns of speech errors (e.g., Hartsuiker, 2006;Oppenheim & Dell, 2010) or on the patterns of disfluencies (e.g., Brocklehurst & Corley, 2011;Postma & Kolk, 1993) but so far has had little attention for effects of monitoring on the time-course of lexical selection processes. Below, we will first discuss monitoring mechanisms more in detail, highlighting three characteristics of monitoring that will allow us to make testable predictions.…”

“…In a better controlled experiment using the same basic paradigm as Baars et al (1975), they found that in the non-lexical context, the number of word errors was reduced compared to the mixed context whereas the number of non-lexical errors remained unchanged. They explained the form of their lexicality by context interaction as a result of the interplay between an adaptive monitor and a feedback mechanism (also see Nooteboom & Quené, 2008;Oppenheim & Dell, 2010).…”