Inner speech

inner speech

a window into consciousness
Alain Morin & Bob Uttl

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Neuropsychotherapist.com

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nner speech represents a running commentary on any significant aspects
of ourselves and our world. As such it “exteriorizes” consciousness, so
to speak. While self-talk has been studied in specific situations such as
self-regulation, and during distinct mental states like anxiety, very little
is known about naturally occurring inner speech in everyday life. Morin and
colleagues (Morin et al., 2011; Uttl et al., 2012) have probed inner speech frequency and content in over 500 participants using self-report and thought
sampling measures. Their findings show that inner speech is very often
about the self and that a large portion is concerned with what others think
of the self (e.g., self-evaluating, others’ opinion of the self, appearance, performance), as well as individuals and activities relevant to the self. In addition, self-reported inner speech frequently serves self-regulatory (planning), problem-solving, and mnemonic functions. In a thought sampling
study using cell phones (Uttl et al., 2012), participants indicated talking to
themselves over 50% of all prompt occasions; this is much higher than the
25% previously reported in another study (Heavey & Hurlburt, 2008). These
results are discussed in terms of fit with the existing inner speech literature
and key novelties are underlined.


Inner Speech and Consciousness
Consciousness, broadly defined, consists of one’s
ongoing experience of self and world, which includes
sensations, perceptions, needs, goals, emotions,
thoughts, memories, preferences, attitudes, intentions, etc., (Baars, 1988; Natsoulas, 1978). Because
inner speech constitutes a running verbal commentary that often focuses on the content of one’s subjective experience (Morin, 2005), it represents an
ideal window into consciousness. In this article we
ask: What do people talk to themselves about, how
often, and why? Answering these questions will at
least partially open this window. Our preliminary
results, discussed below, suggest that people can
potentially talk to themselves about a large number
of topics related to the self, others, and the environment. This is consistent with the widespread idea
that consciousness represents a very rich and complex experience (Morin, 2006).
Philosophers (e.g., Aristotle, Ryle) extensively
wrote about inner speech (Blachowicz, 1997), but
Russian psychologists (e.g., Luria, Vygotsky) were
the first to empirically study its self-regulatory function (Sokolov, 1972). Self-regulation involves altering
one’s behavior, resisting temptation, changing one’s
mood, selecting a response from various options,
and filtering irrelevant information (Baumeister &
Vohs, 2003). A broad definition of self-regulation
includes setting goals, planning, problem-solving,
decision-making, and self-motivating speech. Selfdirected speech has been shown to be implicated in
all aforementioned activities, and blocking the inner voice by asking participants to mentally count
backward results in them engaging in more impulsive behavior (Tullett & Inzlicht, 2010). Inner speech
is also involved in all basic language functions such
as reading, writing, and speaking (Abramson &
Goldinger, 1997; Levine et al., 1982). Baddeley and
Hitch (1974) focused on the memory function of inner speech—the “phonological loop” that gets activated when one rehearses material in short-term
working memory, such as a phone number. More
recently, psychologists have increasingly been acknowledging the role of inner speech in self-awareness (DeSouza et al., 2008; Edelman et al., 2011;
Morin & Hamper, 2012; Neuman & Nave, 2010).
Self-awareness is defined as the ability to become
the object of one’s own attention; in that state one
actively identifies, processes, and stores information about the self (Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Morin,
2011a). Although other mental and social factors
underlie self-awareness (Morin, 2004), empirical evidence does support the idea of self-reflection often

being mediated by one’s inner voice (Morin, 2009;
Schneider et al., 2005).
Note that ruminative and negative inner speech
may be associated with diverse psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, social anxiety, and depression (Beazley et al., 2001; Fernyhough, 2004).
Psychotherapeutic interventions have been designed to reduce or change dysfunctional self-talk
(e.g., Meichenbaum, 1977).

Thought Sampling Research
Additional functions of inner speech have been
identified (see Morin, 2011b). It should be apparent
by now that inner speech plays a central role in human consciousness. A variety of measurement techniques exist to assess thought processes, including
inner speech (see De Guerrero, 2005 & Table 1 for a
summary).
Spontaneously occurring mental events in healthy
individuals have been investigated using numerous
variations of the thought sampling method. This
method consists in sampling thinking in participants’
natural environments by using beepers that signal
participants to report aspects of their experience
at random intervals (Hulburt, 1997). To illustrate,
Klinger and Cox (1987-88) relied on a questionnaire
that participants were asked to fill in when being
randomly beeped throughout the day. The questionnaire assessed various characteristics of mental
experiences such as the specificity, detail and color
of visual experiences, as well as sense of control over
these experiences and their time frame. Csikszentmihalyi and Figurski (1982) also used the thought
sampling method and identified the following key
topics people in their sample thought about (from
most to least frequent): work, time, chores, leisure,
self, people, conversations, TV and radio, and food.
Diehl and Hay (2007) asked participants to complete
daily diaries over a 30-day period and to respond to a
checklist of self-descriptors (e.g., agreeable, angry,
energetic, insecure) in order to rate the emotional
valence of their internal experiences. Among other
things, their results showed that fluctuations in affect ratings tended to be related to the number of
daily stressors reported by participants: on days
with a larger number of stressful events, positive affect tended to decrease and negative affect tended
to increase. Goldstein and Kenen (1988) invited volunteers to list their typical thoughts and found that
80% of respondents indicated making agreements
with themselves; 44% of these thoughts were described as being a process of internal dialogue about
lifestyle and health-related issues—i.e., smoking,

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Inner Speech: A Window into Consciousness

Table 1. Representative measures of inner speech.
Measure
Questionnaires

Description
Administering questionnaires made up of self-statements along a variety of
domains (e.g., anxious versus non-anxious). Participants rate the frequency of
their self-talk using a Likert-scale (e.g., from 0 “Never” to 5 “Very Often”).
Private speech
Recordings of spontaneous speech-for-self emitted by children in social situations.
Think out loud method Recordings of adults’ verbalizations as they are working on a given task; participants are explicitly asked to verbalize their thoughts without censoring them.
Videotape reconstruc- “Reconstructing” thoughts that participants had during precise situations (e.g.,
tion procedure
task performance) by showing them video recordings of their behavior; participants are asked to recall inner speech content as accurately as possible.
Thought listing
Retrospectively listing as many thoughts as possible that occurred in specific
situations.
Thought sampling
Collecting a representative sample of participants’ mental experiences in
natural settings. Subjects wear a beeper that produces audio signals at random
intervals throughout the day. They are asked to report the content of their
thoughts upon hearing the beep.
Articulatory suppresHaving participants complete a task while concurrently reciting verses or
sion(1)
mentally counting backward from 100. The forced articulation produced by the
recitation or counting blocks any other articulation that would be otherwise
required when spontaneously engaging in inner speech.
Electromyographic
Making electromyographic recordings of movements of the lips and tongue
recordings of tongue
during problem-solving tasks. These movements represent an objective extermovements
nal expression of inner speech activity.
(1) Articulatory suppression does not assess inner speech per se but informs the researcher as to what types of
cognitive work cannot be accomplished without it.

drinking, working, interpersonal relations, reducing
weight, and studying. These results illustrate the often mentioned “dialogical” nature of inner speech
(Fernyhough, 1996). Heavey and Hurlburt (2008)
examined the frequency of common inner experience phenomena by using a beeper that randomly
cued participants to report whatever mental events
they were experiencing at the moment of the probe.
Their small sample (n = 30) of college students reported five basic types of inner experiences each
occurring approximately 20% of the time: inner
speech, mental imagery, thinking without symbols,
feelings, and sensory awareness.

inner speech in our case, the thought listing procedure represents a better option1. With this method,
volunteers are invited to retrospectively list as many
thoughts that they can remember having experienced during a specific event.
In one study (Morin, et al. 2011) we employed an
open-format thought listing method to measure inner speech in a sample of over 400 undergraduate
students. Participants were invited to list what they
typically say to themselves when using inner speech.
The thought listing technique is usually used to assess inner speech occurrences in very specific situations during a limited time period (Cacioppo & Petty
,1981)—e.g., immediately following a social interaction or contact with a feared stimulus, where inner
Our Thought Listing Study: Findings
speech content in socially anxious or phobic patients
The thought sampling technique fits well for those
is compared to content generated by healthy particwho want to capture all possible internal events that
ipants. In contrast to this typical use of the thoughtmake up consciousness (e.g., images, sensations),
listing method, we wanted to sample participants’
as described above. However, if one aims at dissectnaturally occurring inner speech. Thus, the novelty
ing a specific aspect of conscious experience, such as
of our approach is that we asked participants to re1 The thought sampling approach can be used to uniquely assess inner speech, but instructions to participants must clearly
specify to report one’s verbal thoughts as opposed to any other form of mental or bodily experience. See “A Cell Phone Study”
section below.

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port inner speech content as occurring in everyday
life without situational or temporal restrictions. The
goal was to obtain as ecological valid inner speech
samples as possible.
We developed a coding scheme to classify and
quantify inner speech data into specific content and
function units. Our coding system includes the following categories: (1) inner speech about the self,
others, or unspecified (e.g., career, emotions, health);
(2) inner speech about people (e.g., family, friends,
community); (3) inner speech about the physical environment (e.g., province/state, workplace, weather); (4) inner speech about activities (e.g., cooking,
driving, leisure); (5) inner speech about events (e.g.,
at school, significant social events, future events);
and (6) inner speech functions (e.g., planning tasks
to do, remembering, self-censorship).
Table 2 presents the most frequently reported
inner speech content and functions by participants.
One general observation is that our participants
mostly reported talking to themselves about themselves. In decreasing order, the most frequently
mentioned units were self-evaluation, emotions,
physical appearance, relationships, problems, food,
behavior, financial situation, stress, performance,
future, education, beliefs, others’ opinion of self,
and hypothetical situations. The least frequently
reported inner speech units were dream contents,
sexuality, personality traits, and death. In terms of
inner speech functions, participants reported (in decreasing order) talking to themselves to plan tasks,
to remember, to self-motivate, to solve problems, to
plan when to do specific tasks, to think, to rehearse
upcoming conversations, to read, write or calculate, to study, to control emotions, to decide what
to wear, to self-censor, and to replay past conversations. The less frequently reported functions were
praying, concentrating, rephrasing, and creativity.
Regarding self-talk pertaining to participants’ social environment, participants mostly reported (in
decreasing importance) engaging in inner speech
about family members, friends, people in general,
their intimate partner, and children; larger social
groups like one’s nation were rarely the focus on inner speech in our sample. In terms of activities, our
participants often indicated talking to themselves
about school, sports activities, work, leisure activities, chores, music, and driving. Activities that were
rarely mentioned were moving, alcohol and drug use,
and dating. Our participants talked to themselves
mostly about their immediate physical environment
and not much about their town, neighbourhood or
workplace. And finally, participants reported talking

Table 2. Most frequently self-reported
inner speech content and functions.
Inner speech
categories
Self & others—
general

Functions

Social
environment

Activities

Physical
environment
Events

Inner speech content
• self-evaluation
• emotions
• physical appearance
• relationships
• problems
• food
• behavior
• financial situation
• stress
• performance
• future
• education
• beliefs
• others’ opinion of self
• hypothetical situations
• to plan tasks
• to remember
• to self-motivate
• to solve problems
• to plan when to do specific tasks
• to think
• to rehearse upcoming conversations
• to read, write or calculate
• to study
• to control emotions
• to determine what to wear
• to self-censor
• to replay past conversations
• family members
• friends
• people in general
• intimate partner
• children
• school & educational activities
• sports activities
• work
• leisure activities
• chores
• music
• driving
• immediate surroundings
• general daily events
• future events
• past events


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to themselves mostly about general daily events, fuThe most often self-reported inner speech functure events, and past events.
tion was self-regulation, which includes planning
to engage in specific tasks, self-motivating speech,
self-censorship, time management, and planning
Thought Listing Study: Discussion
when to do things. Also frequently mentioned was
Participants in our sample mostly reported talkself-talk used to solve problems and make decisions,
ing to themselves about themselves. This observaas well as inner speech used to remember things.
tion is consistent with the proposed role played by
These inner speech functions are precisely those
inner speech in self-reflection (Morin & Hamper,
that have been the most extensively investigated in
2012). Participants indicated talking to themselves
the literature (e.g., Zivin, 1979).
about private self-aspects (e.g., emotions, beliefs)
and public self-aspects (e.g., physical appearance,
behavior), which reflects the classic distinction in- A Cell Phone Study
troduced by Fenigstein and colleagues (1975) beThe thought listing approach described above
tween private and public self-consciousness. Also, represents a nonreactive method which shows
a significant proportion of inner speech was about good criterion-related, concurrent, and discrimiwhat others think of the self (e.g., self-evaluating, nant validity (Cacioppo et al., 1997). In other words,
others’ opinion of self, appearance): this echoes inner speech measured with the thought listing apMead’s view (1934) that the self at least partially de- proach correlates well with other measures of inner
fines itself by taking others’ perspective and imag- speech, does not correlate with measures unrelated
ining how one is perceived by others. Participants to inner speech, and predicts actual behavior (e.g.,
reported frequently engaging in self-talk about fu- emotional reaction to feared stimuli). However, beture events. A growing body of literature is currently cause of its retrospective and reconstructive nature,
examining mental time travel (MTT) (Quoidback et the thought-listing method may cause recall errors.
al., 2008; Szpunar, 2010). MTT involves mentally Put simply, there is the possibility that participants
projecting oneself in a fictional future. Our results fit may forget some actual inner speech occurrences
with those obtained by D’Argembeau et al. (2009),
suggesting that at least some MTT is mediated by
inner speech. Their study also showed that futureoriented thoughts often gravitated around leisure
activities, work, errands, and relationships. The reported functions of future-oriented thoughts in the
same study were planning, deciding, setting goals,
and reassuring the self. These functions are consistent with inner speech functions reported by our participants.
Self-reported inner speech about people focused
more on individuals that are close to oneself―family
members, friends, intimate partner—and much less
on distant and unknown others, such as the community and the world. It may be reasonable to assume
that people are simply more interested in (and may
talk to themselves more often about) any things
directly relevant to themselves. In addition, participants in our sample talked to themselves mostly
about their immediate physical environment as opposed to more distant environmental themes such
as one’s city, province, or nation. Again, this most
likely reflects people’s natural inclination to think
about things significant to the self. Participants indicated frequently talking to themselves about school
and education, work, leisure activities, and chores.
These represent typical activities most undergraduate students regularly engage in.

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or may “recall” instances that never occurred. The
thought sampling approach discussed previously
(see Footnote 1) is likely to take care of this limitation because it directly samples participants’ inner
speech by randomly interrupting them during daily
activities, thus producing more “natural” (ecologically valid) content that does not rely on memory
resources. Accordingly, in the next study, we (Uttl et
al., 2012) used participants’ cell phones as a beeper
device and asked them through text messaging to
report their immediate inner speech content and
current activity.
Participants were randomly sent eight prompts
per day for seven days; each prompt asked them to
report (1) whether they were talking to themselves
or not, (2) (if yes) what they were talking to themselves about, and (3) what activity they were engaged in. The coding scheme described previously
was used to classify inner speech. The content and
functions of inner speech that participants reported upon receipt of the text message prompts were
comparable to what we obtained using the thought
listing technique, suggesting that (1) a retrospective self-report approach is valid and not overly contaminated with recall biases, and (2) participants are
able to report on their own inner speech use with
a reasonable degree of accuracy. Our participants
reported being engaged in the following activities
(in decreasing order) when they received the text
messages: watching TV, doing homework, talking
to someone, eating, driving, relaxing, and surfing
the internet or writing emails. Perhaps the most
intriguing result we obtained was that participants
reported talking to themselves well over 50 percent
of all messages sent. This is much higher than the
twenty-five percent previously reported by Heavey
and Hurlburt (2008) in their small sample study of 30
participants. Our 160-participant sample allows for
better generalization and suggests that people talk
to themselves much more often that previously estimated.

Future Research Questions and Conclusion

Our previous studies inform us about normal,
healthy consciousness in university students. What
about older nonstudent individuals? What about abnormal, unhealthy conscious experiences? What do
anxious, depressed, or addicted individuals talk to
themselves about? How does inner speech use correlate with various personality traits (e.g., Extroversion, Agreeableness) and cognitive operations (e.g.,
prospective memory, verbal knowledge)? Are there
cultural differences in inner speech frequency, content, and functions? These questions remain to be
addressed, and their answers will further enhance
our understanding of consciousness.

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Alain Morin, Ph.D.
Dr. Alain Morin got his Ph.D from Laval University in 1992. Between 1991 and 2001 he taught various courses and conducted
research in a host of Canadian universities and colleges in the
Maritimes (e.g., St. Francis Xavier University, Acadia University)
and Québec (e.g., Université de Montréal, CEGEP de Rivière-duLoup). Now at Mount Royal University in Calgary, he teaches
Theories of Personality, Social Cognition, and The Self. His field
of expertise is self-awareness, more specifically: its cognitive underlying mechanisms with an emphasis on inner speech. Morin
publishes scientific papers in journals such as Consciousness &
Cognition, Cortex, Brain & Behavioral Sciences, Brain Research
Bulletin, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Journal of Mind and Behavior, and Science & Consciousness Review. His most recent contribution is a meta-analysis of brain-imaging studies using self-tasks in relation to left
inferior frontal gyrus activation (the brain area that sustains inner speech). He also recently published a book
chapter entitled “What are animals conscious of?” Morin is currently working on individual differences in inner speech, personality, psychopathology, and cognition. Other research interests include self-recognition, the
localization of the self in the brain, the split-brain phenomenon, neurophilosophy, fame and self-destruction,
and the antecedents of self-consciousness.

Bob Uttl, Ph.D.
Dr. Bob Uttl has held academic posts in a several universities and research institutes including National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD (USA), Oregon State
University, Corvallis, OR (USA), University of Tsukuba,
Tsukuba City (Japan), and Tamagawa University, Tokyo
(Japan). Currently, he is Associate Professor of Psychology at Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada. His
research interests are broadly focused on cognition and
cognitive aging. Topics of current and recent work include the relation between perception, processing resources, and memory; changes in perception, processing
resources, memory, and intelligence due to normal and pathological aging; prospective memory; inner speech;
and measurement and research methods in psychology. Dr. Uttl has served as co-editor of Dynamic Cognitive
Processes (2005) and Memory and Emotion (2006), co-authored over fifty scientific papers, and presented his
research at numerous conferences worldwide.

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