Private Speech

Private speech is speech that a person addresses to themselves rather than to another listener, used for communication with oneself, self-guidance through a task and behavioral self-regulation. Children have been observed engaging in private speech mainly between roughly two and seven years of age; although it is spoken audibly, private speech is neither intended for, nor directed at, other people. Private speech was first studied by Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, and in recent decades it has received renewed attention from researchers, who have found a positive correlation between a child's use of private speech and that child's task performance and achievement, a connection Vygotsky himself had already noted. As children begin formal schooling, their outward use of private speech typically decreases, described in the research as private speech going underground, as it is thought to become internalized rather than disappearing. In education, private speech is used as evidence for how young children draw on self-directed talk to plan, guide and monitor their own learning before that capacity becomes silent, internal thought.