The development of children's knowledge about inner speech

Two studies demonstrated that preschool children have little knowledge and awareness of inner speech. Study 1 showed that, in contrast to 6- to 7-year-olds and adults, 4-year-olds usually did not infer that a person silently engaged in such intrinsically verbal mental activities as reading, counting, or recalling items from a shopping list was saying things to herself. They also tended to deny that covert speech is a possible human activity. Study 2 demonstrated that 4- and 5-year-olds are much poorer than adults at detecting their own inner speech. Children seem to acquire this sort of knowledge and awareness during the early school years, perhaps through experiencing their own inner speech while reading, writing, adding, and subtracting.