Inner speech.

Inner speech, also known as the inner voice or verbal thought, is a familiar aspect of conscious experience with complex cognitive components and distributed neural bases. Evidence suggests it plays roles in abstract thought, metacognition, memory, and executive function. A controversial area concerns its relation to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) in schizophrenia, where some propose that sufferers misidentify their own inner speech as external. Recent research has used artificial intelligence to translate neural and neuromuscular signatures of inner speech into outer speech signals, potentially enabling new applications and interventions.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Inner speech travels under many aliases: the inner voice, verbal thought, thinking in words, internal verbalization, "talking in your head," the "little voice in the head," and so on. It is both a familiar element of first-person experience and a psychological phenomenon whose complex cognitive components and distributed neural bases are increasingly well understood. There is evidence that inner speech plays a variety of cognitive roles, from enabling abstract thought, to supporting metacognition, memory, and executive function. One active area of controversy concerns the relation of inner speech to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) in schizophrenia, with a common proposal being that sufferers of AVH misidentify their own inner speech as being generated by someone else. Recently, researchers have used artificial intelligence to translate the neural and neuromuscular signatures of inner speech into corresponding outer speech signals, laying the groundwork for a variety of new applications and interventions. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain Philosophy > Consciousness Philosophy > Psychological Capacities.