Psychology of People Who Talk to Themselves

It's 7:52 in the morning, you're in the hallway with one shoe on, and you're asking the walls where the keys went. Then comes the embarrassed thought: isn't this what people do when they start to lose it? This video looks at the psychology of people who talk to themselves. It starts with what self-talk and private speech are, and with Lev Vygotsky's idea that the voice in your head began as words other people said to you. Then it goes through what research has found about speaking aloud: faster searching in the work of Gary Lupyan and Daniel Swingley, and better memory in Colin MacLeod's production effect. From there the story moves to the four jobs your voice does when you say it out loud: finding, remembering, steering and calming. It also covers the one-word switch, whether you say "I" or your own name, and how that small change in distance alters its effect. Marcus Aurelius makes an appearance, talking to himself as "you" in his notebook. It ends with the question most people carry: when is muttering just a working mind, and when is it a sign of something else? By the end you should be able to tell the two apart.