Who Are You Actually Talking To? (The Truth About Self-Talk)

Some time in the last minute, you said something to yourself. Something you already knew. So who were you telling? The answer starts outside your head, with a four-year-old and a puzzle. This is why we talk to ourselves. Why saying 'keys, keys, keys' really does help you find them, by a fraction of a second. Why a child talks more the harder the puzzle gets, and what Piaget and Vygotsky each made of it. How that voice gets quieter and moves indoors to become the voice in your head. A 2017 study in which imagining a sound changed how the brain heard the real one. A beeper study in which the inner voice was there in about a quarter of moments on average, in three out of four for some people and never for others. What happens to you when the inner voice is kept busy. Why instructions beat cheering for athletes. And why using your own name, instead of 'I', led to speeches that judges rated better. It is about self talk and the inner voice as researchers have measured them, not advice. Every number comes from a published study, and the uncertain ones are called uncertain. The sources are listed below. CHAPTERS 0:00 Who were you telling? 0:31 Keys, keys, keys 1:17 The puzzle 2:02 The voice goes indoors 2:26 Your brain thinks you are talking 3:07 The beeper 4:10 Take the voice away 4:56 What athletes know 5:27 Use your own name 6:03 The answer SOURCES ScienceDaily report, 2012: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases... HealthDay report: https://www.healthday.com/health-news... Wikipedia: Private speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private... Wikipedia: Intrapersonal communication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrape... Review in PMC (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles... ELife article (elifesciences.org): https://elifesciences.org/articles/28197 University report (unsw.edu.au): https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news... Hurlburt, Psychology Today, 2011: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/bl... Scientific American: https://scientificamerican.com/articl... ScienceDaily: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases... Review citing the study (Frontiers, 2012): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/... Journal page: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/... ScienceDaily report: https://sciencedaily.com/releases/201... Paper (PDF, Berkeley): https://rascl.berkeley.edu/assets/fil... University of Michigan report: https://prod.lsa.umich.edu/psych/news... Why We Live Like This: new explainers on why everyday life is the way it is. Subscribe for the next one. MUSIC "Thinking Music", "Marty Gots a Plan", "Wholesome", "Dreamy Flashback", "Investigations", "Deliberate Thought", "Hidden Agenda", "Somewhere Sunny", "At Rest" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... #selftalk #innervoice #psychology