Private Speech and Problem Solving

If you were to walk into any classroom occupied with young children aged from three years old through to seven years old, you would be overwhelmed by the amount of constant talking that is being produced while the children are working or playing. Most of what you would hear would be referred to as private speech. Private speech is defined as the language spoken aloud to oneself for communication and self-regulation of behaviour (Goudena, 1987). Numerous individuals have endeavored to demonstrate why children use private speech so conspicuously and to illustrate the part that it plays in a child’s development, or if there is any at all. This paper is going to analyze the role of private speech in problem solving and a child’s development with the use of experimental studies performed between 1986 and 2012 .

The first person to develop the concept of private speech, although he called it egocentric speech was Piaget in 1923 (Goudena, 1987). He thought it was the outcome of children being not fully cognitively developed, and presumed that their private speech was egocentric as they were unable to take into account the perspectives of others. Piaget likewise presumed that their speech was singularly for themselves, and served no developmental or social purpose (Berk, 1986). It was additionally inferred that as children develop in age and their social abilities increase, and they have the capacity to embrace the viewpoints of other individuals, the measure of private speech they utilize diminishes.

Not all theorists agreed with Piaget’s beliefs and findings. Vygotsky had different thoughts and findings. Vygotsky’s theory was that private speech performed has an essential, positive meaning in a child’s development (Berk, 1986). ...

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...ment, he used students that were in high school and college, and created different test environments to see in which they would utter more. He provided them with one of the five possible 30 minute tests, and they took them in the different environments. The tests were made up of ten questions; two were association questions, three were reasoning problems, and the remaining five were word problems, to promote private speech. The results implied that private speech does not disappear after childhood, but merely becomes internalized due to cognitive development and social rules. The results also showed that people were more likely to use private speech in a talking environment then a quiet environment as they possibly did not want others to hear them. If a student sees or hears another individual use private speech, they themselves will become more likely to use it.