Varieties of Inner Speech and Creative Potential

Inner speaking, the covert talking that goes on inside a person's mind, can shape creative thought. How the phenomenological properties and quality of inner speaking correlate with a person's creative potential, however, is an open scientific problem. To explore this, participants ( n = 267) filled in the revised Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire and the revised Launay Slade Hallucination Scale (auditory subscale), and performed three tests of creative potential: one divergent (Alternative Uses Test) and two convergent thinking tests (Compound Remote Associates Test, short Hagen Matrices Test). The results showed that a tendency to engage in condensed and evaluative/ critical inner speaking negatively correlated with convergent thinking ability; and the results pointed toward a potential negative correlation of auditory hallucination proneness with divergent and convergent thinking ability. No evidence was found for a correlation of the dialogicality, imagining of others’ voices, or positive/regulatory aspect of the participants day-to-day inner speech, with creative potential. Herewith, the presented study contributes novel insight into the relationship between the varieties of inner speech and creative potential.

THE DISCOURSE-AND-NARRATIVE POLYPHONY OF THE QUOTIDIAN AND THE PUBLIC-RELATED IN IAN MCEWAN’S SATURDAY (2005)

In the English-written literature, the «one day novel» genre modification is represented by an appreciable number of novels. V.Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and J. Joyce’s Ulysses are the famous paragons of the subgenre. Ian McEwans’ Saturday also joins this category. The novel’s protagonist’s inner speech intensification as well as retrospective inclusions and digressions help the narrator to go beyond the conventional boundaries of the «one day novel» genre variety. The research undertaken in the given paper pursues exploration of of the possibility of combining the discourse and narrative elements of the literary text into one narrative entity. In the Ian McEwan’s circadian novel Saturday, the professional discourse of the neurosurgery as well as other discourses are skillfully and masterfully interwoven into the story-action-and-event governed textual terrain, that is into its narration. In the paper, the polysemantic structure of the terms «quotidian», «discourse», «narrative» has been analyzed. Also, such aspectual narratives of the novel as the quotidian narrative, medical, psychological, literary, mass media, topographical, musical, sports ones have been identified and some of them explored. Also, the plot-building function of the Neo-Victorian code of the novel has been specified and the Leitmotiff recurrence of some quotations, allusions and reminiscences has been dwelt on. In the paper, the principle of narrativization of a discourse is hypothesized; in keeping with it, the discourse-containedinformation is delivered through the action-and-event-based narrative. The discourse-governed knowledge is not distanced from the narrative, both are fused into one narrative whole. This principle accounts for a polyphonic interplay of discourses and narratives in the novel treated here.

Concepts, abstractness, and inner speech

We explore the role of inner speech (covert self-directed talk) during the acquisition and use of concepts differing in abstractness. Following Vygotsky, inner speech results from the internationalization of linguistically mediated interactions that regulate cognition and behaviour. When we acquire and processabstract concepts, uncertainties about word meaning might lead us to search actively for their meaning.Inner speech might play a role in this searching process and be differentially involved in concept learning compared to use of known concepts. Importantly, inner speech comes in different varieties – e.g., it can be expanded or condensed (with the latter involving syntactic and semantic forms of abbreviation). Do we useinner speech differently with concepts varying in abstractness? Which kinds of inner speech do we preferentially use with different kinds of abstract concepts (e.g., emotions vs. numbers)? What other features of inner speech, such as dialogicality, might facilitate our use of concepts varying in abstractness(byallowing us to monitor the limits of our knowledge in simulated social exchanges, through a process we term inner social metacognition)? In tackling these questions, we address the possibility that different varieties of inner speech are flexibly used during the acquisition of concepts and their everyday use.

The role of inner speech in the speech production process

The article summarizes the current state of understanding of the concept of inner speech and evaluates the role of the internal language in the speech generation process. First, the available definitions of inner speech are presented and its features are briefly characterised. Subsequently, the inner voice is compared to overt speech and the main differences between those two planes of speech: the internal and the external one are outlined. Since the aim of the paper is to show the role of inner speech in overt speech production, a speech generation model which coalesces Levelt‘s (1993) assumptions with the stratifi cational approach to language is presented. Different stages of linguistic processing are described and the impact of internal languaging on linguistic output is discussed. It is claimed that inner speech plays a threefold role in overt speech production: (1) provides an inter-nal draft for external speech, (2) is vital for the self-monitoring system, and (3) supports working memory. Any impairment in the functioning of inner speech may thus lead to speech errors and slips of the tongue phenomena.

Distinct neural mechanisms support different forms of inner speech

Humans have the ability to mentally examine speech. This covert form of speech production is often accompanied by sensory (e.g., auditory) percepts. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms that generate these percepts are still debated. According to a prominent proposal, inner speech has at least two distinct phenomenological components: inner speaking and inner hearing. Here we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to test whether these two phenomenologically distinct processes are supported by distinct cerebral mechanisms. We hypothesise that inner speaking relies more strongly on an online motor-to-sensory simulation that constructs a multisensory experience, whereas inner hearing relies more strongly on a memory-retrieval process, where the multisensory experience is reconstructed from stored motor-to-sensory associations. We predict that the speech motor system will be involved more strongly during inner speaking than inner hearing. This will be revealed by modulations of TMS evoked responses at muscle level following cortical stimulation of the lip primary motor cortex.

A review of functional and structural neuroimaging studies to investigate the inner speech model of auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia

Although the pathophysiology of auditory verbal hallucinations remains uncertain, the inner speech model remains a prominent theory. A systematic review and meta-analyses of both functional and structural neuroimaging studies were performed to investigate the inner speech model. Of the 417 papers retrieved, 26 met the inclusion criteria. Meta-analyses found the left insula to be significantly active during auditory verbal hallucinations and to have a significantly reduced grey matter volume in hallucinators. Dysfunction of the left insula may contribute to the misattribution of inner speech due to its suggested roles in both inner speech production and the salience network. No significant activity was found at Broca’s area or Heschl’s gyrus during auditory verbal hallucinations. Furthermore, no structural abnormalities were found at these sites or in the arcuate fasciculi. Overall, evidence was found to both support and oppose the inner speech model. Further research should particularly include a systematic review of task-based trait studies with a focus on inner speech production and self-referential processing, and analyses of additional language-related white matter tracts.

A Brain Listening to Itself

The ubiquitous presence of ambiguous voices in Beckett’s work remains an enduring mystery. The narrative work is no exception, to the point that Beckett’s fiction after Murphy (1938) can be read as, to quote The Unnamable (1953), “entirely a matter of voices; no other metaphor is appropriate” (319). Given the alien qualities of these voices, their intrusive independent agency, and their sometimes tormenting phenomenology, two frameworks of interpretation have so far prevailed. On the one hand, there are narratologists such as Brian Richardson (2006) who have proposed an “unnatural” reading of these voices, by arguing that these alien, multiple, sourceless voices cannot be traced back or ascribed to any actual experience within the human domain; that they cannot be “naturalized” (Culler 1975; 2018; see also Fludernik 1996) by the reader. On the other hand, there is a long-standing “pathological” framework, which sees voices in Beckett’s work as a fictional rendering of a wide range of experiences associated with mental illnesses, mostly of auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVHs) typical of schizophrenia. This chapter suggests that an alternative, natural, and non-pathological experience is the target of Beckett’s fictional cognitive models having voices as core modeling elements. By drawing on contemporary cognitive research on inner speech (roughly speaking, the activity of silently talking to, with and within oneself), it is advocated that voices in Beckett’s models target the working of inner speech, only defamiliarized or, as we shall see, “detuned” as a modeling alteration to explore its functioning within human cognition.

Monitoring Processes and Their Neuronal Correlates as the Basis of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in a Non-clinical Sample

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are a characteristic symptom of psychosis. An influential cognitive model accounting for the mechanisms in the generation of AVHs describes a defective monitoring of inner speech, leading to the misidentification of internally generated thoughts as externally generated events. In this study, we utilized an inner speech paradigm during a simultaneous measurement with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in order to replicate the findings of neural correlates of inner speech and auditory verbal imagery (AVI) in healthy subjects, reported in earlier studies, and to provide the first validation of the paradigm for fNIRS measurements. To this end, 20 healthy subjects were required to generate and silently recite first and second person sentences in their own voice (inner speech) and imagine the same sentences in a different, alien voice (AVI). Furthermore, questionnaires were deployed to assess the predisposition to acoustic hallucinations and schizotypal traits to investigate their connection to activation patterns associated with inner speech and monitoring processes. The results showed that both methods, fNIRS and fMRI, exhibited congruent activations in key brain areas, claimed to be associated with monitoring processes, indicating that the paradigm seems to be applicable using fNIRS alone. Furthermore, the results showed similar brain areas activated during inner speech and monitoring processes to those from earlier studies. However, our results indicate that the activations were dependent more on the sentence form and less on the imaging condition, showing more active brain areas associated with second person sentences. Integration of the sentence construction into the model of inner speech and deficient monitoring processes as the basis for the formation of AVHs should be considered in further studies. Furthermore, negative correlations between questionnaires' scores and activations in precentral gyrus and premotor cortex indicate a relationship of schizotypal characteristics and a deficient activation pattern.

EXPRESS: Articulatory suppression delays processing of abstract words: the role of inner speech

Compared to concrete concepts, like “book”, abstract concepts expressed by words like “justice” are more detached from sensorial experiences, even though they are also grounded in sensorial modalities. Abstract concepts lack a single object as referent and are characterized by higher variability both within and across participants. According to the Word as Social Tool (WAT) proposal, owing to their complexity, abstract concepts need to be processed with the help of inner language. Inner language can namely help participants to re-explain to themselves the meaning of the word, to keep information active in working memory, and to prepare themselves to ask information from more competent people. While previous studies have demonstrated that the mouth is involved during abstract concepts’ processing, both the functional role and the mechanisms underlying this involvement still need to be clarified. We report an experiment in which participants were required to evaluate whether 78 words were abstract or concrete by pressing two different pedals. During the judgment task, they were submitted, in different blocks, to a baseline, an articulatory suppression, and a manipulation condition. In the last two conditions, they had to repeat a syllable continually and to manipulate a softball with their dominant hand. Results showed that articulatory suppression slowed down the processing of abstract more than that of concrete words. Overall results confirm the WAT proposal’s hypothesis that abstract concepts processing involves the mouth motor system and specifically inner speech. We discuss the implications for current theories of conceptual representation.