Private Speech, Executive Functioning, and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation

Seventy-five years after Vygotsky’s death, scholarship exploring developmental relations between language and thought continues to be strong. This timely edited volume compiles contributions from international leaders in the field on the roles of language and private speech (self-talk) in the development of self-regulation and executive functioning in children and adults. New theoretical insights, empirical research, and potential clinical and educational applications of scholarship on private speech are presented. Relevant for undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of psychology, education, linguistics, and cognitive science, this text will be an essential volume for those interested in the interface between language, cognition, and behavior, and the development of regulatory or cognitive control over behavior.

Adam Winsler is Professor of Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His research interests are private speech and the development of self-regulation in typical children and those with ADHD and/or autism; bilingual language development; and early childhood education and the transition to school for ethnically and linguistically diverse children in poverty. He is a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association, and he is editor of the journal Early Childhood Research Quarterly. He is also co-author of the book Scaffolding Children's Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education (1995).

Charles Fernyhough has written extensively on the implications of Vygotsky's theory, particularly for the emergence of verbal mediation in the preschool and early school years. He has previously co-edited a four-volume collection of critical assessments of Vygotsky's work (1999). He has been involved in three major longitudinal developmental studies with samples in Cambridge, Stoke-on-Trent, and Stockton-upon-Tees, along with several studies of psychosis-like symptoms in healthy adults and children. Recent articles have included work on the neuropsychology of voice-hearing, the stress–diathesis model of schizophrenia, and a Vygotskian approach to the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations. His introductory book on developmental psychology, A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist's Chronicle of His Daughter's Developing Mind, will appear in the United States in 2009.

Ignacio (Nacho) Montero is Associate Professor of Research Methods in Psychology and Education at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain. He has studied motivation in education from a socio-cultural perspective, and his work has extended the mediational role of private speech to emotional processes. He has recently edited the book Current Research Trends in Private Speech: Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Self-Regulatory Functions of Language. Also, he engages in considerable editorial activities for Spanish-language journals in psychology and education (Anuario de Psicología, Estudios de Psicología, Revista de Psicología, International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology).