Private speech in adolescents

The main objective of this study was to investigate the occurrence of private speech in adolescents. The data supported the theory that private speech continues to occur during adolescence. Indications were found that prior studies of older children may not have detected private speech due to observer effects. In this study the observer attempted to appear uninterested in the subject's actions to alleviate self-consciousness. Thirty-three female and fourteen male high school upperclassmen and college freshmen took an exam one at a time with a confederate subject who was trained to use private speech. An experimenter recorded all speech produced during the thirty-minute period. The subjects worked in the presence of a confederate who exhibited private speech for the last twenty minutes of the testing session in order to help them believe they could use private speech if they wished to. The relationship found between private speech and observer effects indicates that social situations may have a profound effect upon its occurrence. Private speech was found to be negatively correlated with task performance when uttered before the confederates had begun to speak to themselves. No such correlation was found between private speech and score during the period in which the confederates talked to themselves. The final hypothesis was that the speech emitted would fit into the same categories defined by Berk and Garvin (1984); all but one of their categories were observed. Of the observed categories description of activity and self guidance was correlated with high test scores.