On formal and empirical grounds, the overt form of language cannot be the vehicle that the mind uses for reasoning. Nevertheless, we most frequently experience our thought as "inner speech". It is argued that inner speech aids thought by providing a "handle " for attention, making it possible to pay attention to relational and abstract aspects of thought, and thereby to process them with greater richness. Organisms lacking language have no modality of experience that provides comparable articulation of thought; hence certain kinds of thought very important for human intelligence are simply unavailable to them.
Cited by (95)
Cited by 95 other publications
Bourguignon, Nicolas & Salvatore Lo Bue
2025. An Emergentist Account of Language in the Brain—Seeking Neural Synergies Behind Human Uniqueness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 37:10 ► pp. 1717 ff.
Luzzi, Simona, Oscar Prata & Guido Gainotti
2025. Defective Awareness of Person-Recognition Disorders Through Face, Voice and Name in Right and Left Variants of Semantic Dementia: A Pilot Study. Brain Sciences 15:5 ► pp. 504 ff.
Planer, Ronald J.
2025. A Meme’s Eye View of Pleistocene Symbolic Behavior. Biological Theory
Rodríguez Jordá, Ulises & Ezequiel A. Di Paolo
2025. Linguistic relativity from an enactive perspective: the entanglement of language and cognition. Language Sciences 108 ► pp. 101702 ff.
Wilkinson, Sam & Sofiia Rappe
2025. Dialogism and Inner Speech. Journal of Consciousness Studies 32:7 ► pp. 128 ff.
Chen, Yiran, John Trueswell & Anna Papafragou
2024. Sources and goals in memory and language: Fragility and robustness in event representation. Journal of Memory and Language 135 ► pp. 104475 ff.
Fedorenko, Evelina, Steven T. Piantadosi & Edward A. F. Gibson
2024. Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought. Nature 630:8017 ► pp. 575 ff.
Fernando, Chrisantha, Simon Osindero & Dylan Banarse
2024. The origin and function of external representations. Adaptive Behavior 32:6 ► pp. 515 ff.
Soroli, Efstathia
2024. How language influences spatial thinking, categorization of motion events, and gaze behavior: a cross-linguistic comparison. Language and Cognition 16:4 ► pp. 924 ff.
Harper, David A. & Anthony M. Endres
2023. Menger’s precursors in the German subjective-value tradition and his advancements in the theory of wants and goods. The Review of Austrian Economics 36:2 ► pp. 217 ff.
Holmlund, Terje B., Chelsea Chandler, Peter W. Foltz, Catherine Diaz-Asper, Alex S. Cohen, Zachary Rodriguez & Brita Elvevåg
2023. Towards a temporospatial framework for measurements of disorganization in speech using semantic vectors. Schizophrenia Research 259 ► pp. 71 ff.
Paulson, Spencer
2023. Reflective naturalism. Synthese 203:1
Paulson, Spencer
2025. A social model of cognitive integration. Mind & Language 40:4 ► pp. 386 ff.
Munroe, Wade
2022. Why are you talking to yourself? The epistemic role of inner speech in reasoning. Noûs 56:4 ► pp. 841 ff.
Munroe, Wade
2023. Thinking through talking to yourself: Inner speech as a vehicle of conscious reasoning. Philosophical Psychology 36:2 ► pp. 292 ff.
Munroe, Wade
2023. Semiotics in the head: Thinking about and thinking through symbols. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107:2 ► pp. 413 ff.
Munroe, Wade
2024. What’s So Special About Reasoning? Rationality, Belief Updating, and Internalism. Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10:0
Pérez-Delgado, Carlos A.
2022. A Quantum Software Modeling Language. In Quantum Software Engineering, ► pp. 103 ff.
Skipper, Jeremy I.
2022. A voice without a mouth no more: The neurobiology of language and consciousness. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 140 ► pp. 104772 ff.
Mehdi Afzalinia, Imanollah Bigdeli & Javad Salehi Fadardi
2021. Examining the Necessity of Attention for Consciousness in Iconic Memory Using Modified
Stroop Paradigm. The Neuroscience Journal of Shefaye Khatam 9:2 ► pp. 91 ff.
Gainotti, Guido
2021. Is There a Causal Link between the Left Lateralization of Language and Other Brain Asymmetries? A Review of Data Gathered in Patients with Focal Brain Lesions. Brain Sciences 11:12 ► pp. 1644 ff.
Gainotti, Guido
2023. Some historical notes orienting towards brain mechanisms that could underlie hemispheric asymmetries. Cortex 163 ► pp. 26 ff.
Gainotti, Guido
2023. Is Anosognosia for Left-Sided Hemiplegia Due to a Specific Self-Awareness Defect or to a Poorly Conscious Working Mode Typical of the Right Hemisphere?. Behavioral Sciences 13:12 ► pp. 964 ff.
Gainotti, Guido
2024. Does the right hemisphere retain functional characteristics typical of the emotional adaptive system? An evolutionary approach to the problem of brain asymmetries. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 164 ► pp. 105777 ff.
Ivanova, Anna A., Zachary Mineroff, Vitor Zimmerer, Nancy Kanwisher, Rosemary Varley & Evelina Fedorenko
2021. The Language Network Is Recruited but Not Required for Nonverbal Event Semantics. Neurobiology of Language 2:2 ► pp. 176 ff.
Langland-Hassan, Peter, Frank R. Faries, Maxwell Gatyas, Aimee Dietz & Michael J. Richardson
2021. Assessing abstract thought and its relation to language with a new nonverbal paradigm: Evidence from aphasia. Cognition 211 ► pp. 104622 ff.
Rizzo, Susanna & Greg Melleuish
2021. In Search of the Origins of the Western Mind: McGilchrist and the Axial Age. Histories 1:1 ► pp. 24 ff.
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen
2020. Linguistic Relativity. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Chella, Antonio & Arianna Pipitone
2020. A cognitive architecture for inner speech. Cognitive Systems Research 59 ► pp. 287 ff.
Chella, Antonio & Arianna Pipitone
2020. The inner speech of the IDyOT. Physics of Life Reviews 34-35 ► pp. 42 ff.
Hinzen, Wolfram, Dominika Slušná, Kristen Schroeder, Gabriel Sevilla & Elisabet Vila Borrellas
2020. Mind–Language = ? The significance of non‐verbal autism. Mind & Language 35:4 ► pp. 514 ff.
Petrolini, Valentina, Marta Jorba & Agustín Vicente
2020. The Role of Inner Speech in Executive Functioning Tasks: Schizophrenia With Auditory Verbal Hallucinations and Autistic Spectrum Conditions as Case Studies. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Vandervert, Larry
2020. The prominent role of the cerebellum in the social learning of the phonological loop in working memory: How language was adaptively built from cerebellar inner speech required during stone-tool making. AIMS Neuroscience 7:3 ► pp. 333 ff.
Geva, Sharon & Charles Fernyhough
2019. A Penny for Your Thoughts: Children’s Inner Speech and Its Neuro-Development. Frontiers in Psychology 10
Grigoroglou, Myrto, Sharon Chan & Patricia A. Ganea
2019. Toddlers’ understanding and use of verbal negation in inferential reasoning search tasks. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 183 ► pp. 222 ff.
Vicente, Agustín & Marta Jorba
2019. The Linguistic Determination of Conscious Thought Contents. Noûs 53:3 ► pp. 737 ff.
Knappik, Franz
2018. Bayes and the first person: consciousness of thoughts, inner speech and probabilistic inference. Synthese 195:5 ► pp. 2113 ff.
Cardini, Filippo-Enrico
2017. Arguing for a conscious emergence of language. Lingua 194 ► pp. 67 ff.
Crespi, Bernard, Silven Read & Peter Hurd
2017. Segregating polymorphisms of FOXP2 are associated with measures of inner speech, speech fluency and strength of handedness in a healthy population. Brain and Language 173 ► pp. 33 ff.
Dellantonio, Sara & Luigi Pastore
2017. Semantic Competence from the Inside: Conceptual Architecture and Composition. In Internal Perception [Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, 40], ► pp. 99 ff.
Langland-Hassan, Peter, Christopher Gauker, Michael J. Richardson, Aimee Dietz & Frank R. Faries
2017. Metacognitive deficits in categorization tasks in a population with impaired inner speech. Acta Psychologica 181 ► pp. 62 ff.
Smith, Ryan
2017. A neuro-cognitive defense of the unified self. Consciousness and Cognition 48 ► pp. 21 ff.
Klink, P. Christiaan, Matthew W. Self, Victor A.F. Lamme & Pieter R. Roelfsema
2014. Inner Speech and Metacognition: In Search of a Connection. Mind & Language 29:5 ► pp. 511 ff.
Langland‐Hassan, Peter
2021. Inner speech. WIREs Cognitive Science 12:2
Lemmens, Maarten
2014. Un cas de grammaticalisation ratée ? Étude diachronique de l’emploi du verbe stand en anglais. Anglophonia 18
Vicente, Agustin
2014. The comparator account on thought insertion, alien voices and inner speech: some open questions. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13:2 ► pp. 335 ff.
Hinzen, Wolfram
2013. Narrow syntax and the language of thought. Philosophical Psychology 26:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Coolidge, Frederick L. & Karenleigh A. Overmann
2012. Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking. Current Anthropology 53:2 ► pp. 204 ff.
Gilead, Michael, Nira Liberman & Anat Maril
2012. Construing counterfactual worlds: The role of abstraction. European Journal of Social Psychology 42:3 ► pp. 391 ff.
Brojde, Chandra L., Chelsea Porter & Eliana Colunga
2011. Words can slow down category learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 18:4 ► pp. 798 ff.
Neokleous, Kleanthis C., Marios N. Avraamides, Costas K. Neocleous & Christos N. Schizas
2011. Selective Attention and Consciousness: Investigating Their Relation Through Computational Modelling. Cognitive Computation 3:1 ► pp. 321 ff.
Vicente, Agustin & Fernando Martinez Manrique
2011. Inner Speech: Nature and Functions. Philosophy Compass 6:3 ► pp. 209 ff.
HARPER, DAVID A.
2010. Numbers as a cognitive and social technology: on the nature of conventional number sequences used in economic systems. Journal of Institutional Economics 6:2 ► pp. 167 ff.
Huebner, Bryce & Daniel C. Dennett
2009. Banishing “I” and “we” from accounts of metacognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32:2 ► pp. 148 ff.
Tsuchiya, Naotsugu & Christof Koch
2009. The Relationship Between Consciousness and Attention. In The Neurology of Consciousness, ► pp. 63 ff.
Tsuchiya, Naotsugu & Christof Koch
2016. The Relationship Between Consciousness and Top-Down Attention. In The Neurology of Conciousness, ► pp. 71 ff.
Koch, Christof & Grzegorz Hess
2008. Neurobiologia na tropie świadomości,
Newton, Ashley M. & Jill G. de Villiers
2007. Thinking While Talking. Psychological Science 18:7 ► pp. 574 ff.
Schick, Brenda, Peter De Villiers, Jill De Villiers & Robert Hoffmeister
2007. Language and Theory of Mind: A Study of Deaf Children. Child Development 78:2 ► pp. 376 ff.
Adam Holland, George
2006. Associating social constructionism and extended cognition in information studies. Journal of Documentation 62:1 ► pp. 91 ff.
Blair, Clancy
2006. Toward a revised theory of general intelligence: Further examination of fluid cognitive abilities as unique aspects of human cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29:2 ► pp. 145 ff.
Di Benedetto, Maria-Gabriella, Guerino Giancola & Maria Domenica Di Benedetto
2006. Introducing consciousness in UWB networks by hybrid modelling of admission control. Mobile Networks and Applications 11:4 ► pp. 521 ff.
Machery, Edouard
2005. You Don't Know How You Think: Introspection and Language of Thought. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56:3 ► pp. 469 ff.
MACHERY, EDOUARD
2008. Massive Modularity and the Flexibility of Human Cognition. Mind & Language 23:3 ► pp. 263 ff.
Mirolli, Marco & Domenico Parisi
2005. How can we explain the emergence of a language that benefits the hearer but not the speaker?. Connection Science 17:3-4 ► pp. 307 ff.
Pinker, Steven & Ray Jackendoff
2005. The faculty of language: what's special about it?. Cognition 95:2 ► pp. 201 ff.
Stanovich, Keith E.
2004. Metarepresentation and the great cognitive divide: A commentary on Henriques' “Psychology Defined”. Journal of Clinical Psychology 60:12 ► pp. 1263 ff.
Stanovich, Keith E.
2008. Individual Differences in Reasoning and the Algorithmic/Intentional Level Distinction in Cognitive Science. In Reasoning, ► pp. 414 ff.
Klein, Perry D.
2003. Rethinking the multiplicity of cognitive resources and curricular representations: Alternatives to 'learning styles' and 'multiple intelligences'. Journal of Curriculum Studies 35:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
Fuchs, Catherine
2002. Place et rôle de la variabilité dans les théories linguistiques. In Invariants et variabilités dans les sciences cognitives, ► pp. 157 ff.
Sutton, John
2002. Cognitive conceptions of language and the development of autobiographical memory. Language & Communication 22:3 ► pp. 375 ff.
Ellis, Ralph D.
2001. Implications of Inattentional Blindness for "Enactive'' Theories of Consciousness. Brain and Mind 2:3 ► pp. 297 ff.
Crick, Francis & Christof Koch
2000. The Unconscious Homunculus. Neuropsychoanalysis 2:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Crick, Francis & Christof Koch
2003. A framework for consciousness. Nature Neuroscience 6:2 ► pp. 119 ff.
Livingstone Smith, David
2000. Freudian Science of Consciousness: Then and Now: Commentary by David Livingstone Smith (Biddeford, ME). Neuropsychoanalysis 2:1 ► pp. 38 ff.
Smith, David Livingstone
2003. ‘Some Unimaginable Substratum’: A Contemporary Introduction to Freud’s Philosophy of Mind. In Psychoanalytic Knowledge, ► pp. 54 ff.
Bender, M. Lionel, Vit Bubenik, Grazia Crocco Galèas, Beatriz Dukes, Anthony P. Grant, John Hewson, Laura Hidalgo, Laura Hidalgo, Alan S. Kaye, Alan S. Kaye, Helma Pasch, Gary D. Prideaux, Heidi Quinn, Leonard Rolfe, Sharon Rose, W. Wilfried Schuhmacher, W. Wilfried Schuhmacher, Edward J. Vajda, Jana Vizmuller-Zocco & Johanna Wood
1999. Reviews. <i>WORD</i> 50:1 ► pp. 57 ff.
Jackendoff, Ray
1999. Possible stages in the evolution of the language capacity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3:7 ► pp. 272 ff.
Jackendoff, Ray
2000. Unconscious, Yes; Homunculus,???: Commentary by Ray Jackendoff (Waltham, MA). Neuropsychoanalysis 2:1 ► pp. 17 ff.
Jackendoff, Ray
2007. Linguistics in Cognitive Science: The state of the art. The Linguistic Review 24:4
Clark, Andy
1998. Embodiment and the Philosophy of Mind. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 43 ► pp. 35 ff.
Clark, Andy
2000. Word and Action: Reconciling Rules and Know-How in Moral Cognition. Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 26 ► pp. 267 ff.
Clark, Andy
2012. How to Qualify for a Cognitive Upgrade: Executive Control, Glass Ceilings and the Limits of Simian Success. In The Complex Mind, ► pp. 197 ff.
2007. Language and consciousness. In The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness,
[no author supplied]
2012. References. In Verbal Minds, ► pp. 121 ff.
[no author supplied]
2023. References. In Principles of Cognitive Rehabilitation, ► pp. 253 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.
