Inner Speech in Working Memory During Silent Reading: Effects of Articulatory Suppression on Anticipated Lexical Stress
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2019
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Abstract
As we silently read words on a page, we use an "inner speech" that includes rhythm and
inflections as if we are reading aloud. We also use an inner speech when perfonning non-reading
tasks such as remembering verbal materials, problem solving, mental calculation, and decision
making. Present research has not yet determined whether these two uses of inner speech occupy
the same cognitive resources. This paper presents findings from an eye-tracking study designed
to explore whether the inner speech of silent reading occupies the same resources in working
memory as other mental tasks. In the first part of the experiment, participants read stressalternating
homographs (e.g., PREsent, preSENT) embedded in limericks, which compelled
them to initially expect the incorrect prosody of the homograph and thus encounter a reading
cost. As they read, participants also perfonned articulatory suppression by repeating the word
this aloud. The goal of this was to use the outer voice to occupy the relevant resources in
working memory, thus rendering them unavailable to be used during silent reading-this allows
us to see if those resources pertain to the inner voice of silent reading. Participants also
completed the 18-item Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire (VISQ; McCarthy-Jones &
Fernyhough, 2011), a self-assessment survey that assesses one's relationship with inner speech.
The goal of this was to see if participants who reported experiencing higher levels of inner
speech in their everyday lives would be more susceptible to the reading costs prompted by
articulatory suppression during rhythm-mismatching limericks. If the differences in reading costs
between reading rhythm-matching and -mismatching limericks vanish while repeating this, and if
participants who experience higher levels of inner speech are more affected by articulatory
suppression, then this would show that these two inner voices occupy the same working memory
resources. The study found some preliminary evidence that articulatory suppression can diminish
the effect of stress clash on silent reading, as well as some preliminary indication that inner
speech occupies working memory and that this machinery overlaps with the inner voice of the
rehearsal component of the phonological loop.