%A Alain Morin
%J Psychological Reports
%T Self-awareness and "introspective" private speech in 6-year-old children.
%X It has been suggested recently that self-awareness is cognitively mediated by inner speech and that this hypothesis could be tested by using the private speech paradigm, This paper describes a study in which the creation of a state of self-awareness was attempted in children to test the viability of a research strategy based on private speech and used to explore the hypothesis of a link
between self-awareness and inner speech, and to test directly this hypothesis by comparing the incidence of private speech in self-aware and control conditions. 32 children were asked to evaluate the attractiveness of pictures when in front of a mirror (a widely used self-focusing stimulus) and with no mirror. Reliably more favorable ratings of the images were predicted presuming intensification of affects in self-awareness. Private speech was recorded, with the prediction of a more important incidence of "introspective" self-verbalizations (for example, "Wow! I really like this picture!") in the self-aware condition. None of these outcomes were obtained.
Results are discussed in terms of previous attempts to manipulate self-awareness in children. It is suggested that the private speech paradigm does not appear to be a promising strategy when inner speech and self-awareness are considered
%D 1991
%P 1299-1306
%L cogprints2561
%V 68

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