A New Look at Children's Private Speech: The Effects of Age, Task Difficulty, and Parent Presence

Abstract

The present study re-evaluated several hypotheses concerning the selfregulatory nature of children's private speech. It was hypothesised that if children's private speech is self-regulatory, it should differ systematically as a function of child's age, task difficulty, and the presence of another in a task situation, and it should be positively related to task performance. Twenty-four children at each of three age levels (2, 31/2, and 5 years) were videotaped while working alone and with a parent on different sets of 3 puzzles that varied in difficulty. Children's speech was recorded and coded as private or social. The proportion of total speech coded as private increased slightly with age and was curvilinearly related to puzzle difficulty, with the most private speech observed on moderately difficult puzzles. In addition, private speech was positively related to task performance, especially on medium and difficult tasks. These results are consistent with the view that private speech is self-regulatory. Parental presence had no effect on the percentage of private speech. These results suggest that parents' behaviour during joint problem-solving probably should not be taken to be strictly regulatory.