Talking to Yourself Out Loud May Be a Sign of Higher Intelligence, Researchers Find
If you’ve ever been caught talking to yourself, you know it’s usually embarrassing. Although conversing with others is socially acceptable, speaking out loud to oneself is often associated with mental illness, such as schizophrenia.
However, People tend to forget that there’s always an internal conversation inside the brain. This inner talk helps you make decisions, reason, and complete typical daily tasks. Without it, we would not have conscious thought, organize our thoughts and emotions, or control our actions.
In the Neuroscience Letters publishing, “Domain-Specific Distribution of Working Memory Processes Along Human Prefrontal and Parietal Cortices: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study” by Gruber and Cramon,” researchers found that without inner conscious thought or external self-talk, we resort to our primal behaviors.
In this design, experimenters directed human subjects to speak meaningless phrases, such as “blah, blah, blah,” while completing visual and auditory tasks. Much like a monkey, the participants began to use visual and sound areas of the brain separately to complete tasks rather than a combination.
Humans, therefore, use this technique to control behavior and complete tasks. Although other methods will likely work, we prefer this one since we are accustomed to our typical mental processes.
Moreover, transforming these healthy internal discussions into outward projections is common. Researchers are now looking into this function’s benefits and believe it may even indicate higher intelligence.
According to “The Impact of Verbal Instructions on Goal-Directed Behavior” in Acta Psychologica by Kirkham, Breeze, and Mari-Beffa, self-directed conversation has many positive reasons.
In the study, participants were given written instructions and told to recite them silently or out loud. While assessing the participants’ concentration and performance, they found improvement in both areas when they read the instructions aloud.
Although private chat remains vital, this study shows that talking to oneself out loud while completing a task can help us gain better control. Researchers believe our receptiveness to auditory commands is responsible for positive changes.
Kirkham adds that athletes are more likely to use this behavior as it teaches them how to play better and motivates them. This pattern demonstrates that humans have adapted better to auditory rules rather than following written information.
To break it down even further, various forms of outward self-talk exist. Tahmasebi Boroujeni and Shahbazi issued their study called “The Effect of Instructional and Motivational Self-Talk on Performance of Basketball’s Motor Skill” in Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences where they investigated various types of external speech and measured basketball performance on 187 students.
These researchers found that instructional self-talk improved accuracy pass and shot, indicating that this method is better for precision and timing. Motivational self-talk, on the other hand, increases passing speed, showing that this type increases skill speed.
Contrary to popular belief, talking aloud can be a helpful motivator and commander. These unique individuals are potentially demonstrating signs of high cognitive functioning, making them more intellectually capable.
Rather than immediately categorizing these individuals as mentally unstable, consider their internal thought process and how they may encourage themselves to scale new heights.
