Tuesday, June 4th at 9am Pacific Daylight Savings Time
Guest Speaker: Charles Fernyhough, Professor Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK
Contact Francine Smolucha at lsmolucha@hotmail.com for the ZOOM link.
Summary: Charles Fernyhough and his colleagues’s pioneering research identified the neural network for inner speech.The Dorsal Language Stream is activated during both overt speech and covert (inner speech). This discovery is consistent with Vygotsky’s theory of internalized speech. Activation of the DLS is sufficient for monologic inner speech that doesn’t involve an imaginary conversation with another person. However, dialogical inner speech involves further connections with the parietal lobe. There are many implications for understanding the role of inner speech, its development, and how it networks with other psychological functions.
Readings:
Additional Reading on the topic of inner speech by Tatiana Akhutina:
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Was this particular dialogue recorded? If so, the recording does not appear on this page. If such a recording does exist, I would love to see it. Might that be possible? Thanks!
Another researcher that Charles mentioned in his presentation is
Russ Hurlbert, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Charles discussed the Descriptive Experience Sampling method developed by Hurlbert.
At the beginning of his presentation, Charles mentions the pioneering work of Oliver Zangwell, the “Father of British Neuropsychology.”
Here is a link to a short biography of an important figure in neuropsychology (whose contributions I was not familiar with):
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/father-british-neuropsychology
This is a test
While Activity Theory did not regard speaking as an activity, Charles suggests that
speaking does fit the model of action on an object if we consider inner speech as an action on a mental representation. I would go further and suggest that Leontiev’s model of activity
with a tool on an object – could even be applied to overt speech that would use words to
manipulate an animate object. If I call my dog, or tell my child to be quiet, or urge people to vote on election day. Also inner speech can direct emotions, motivation,and behaviors which aren’t included under mental representations.
The Role of Inner Speech in the Construction of an Utterance
Charles mentioned that infants have Executive Functions. Wondering what he meant.
Infants certainly have cognitive processes but they would not have Executive Functions as usually understood (i.e. prefrontal neural networks that regulate other psychological functions as well as behavior).