Sarah is working in the kitchen, preparing her family's evening meal. Although she seems intent on her task, part of her mind is monitoring her daughter Jenny in the adjacent living room.
Jenny, four years old, is easy to keep up with because she talks to herself - almost constantly when she's occupied and thinks she's alone.
"Oh, you don't fit here!" Jenny exclaims, as she plays with a peg and slot game. "I need a red one. You're not round! Besides, you're too big."
Sarah hears the clack of wooden pegs, and she smiles. Jenny's ability to amuse herself is a never-ending source of delight and satisfaction for Sarah.
Private Speech and Egocentric Speech
Psychologists refer to such speech as Jenny's as private speech. All people, including adults, talk to themselves. The difference in adult and child private speech is that adults talk to themselves in private, while children talk to themselves in public places, like in school and on playgrounds, as well as in private. Sometimes this speech is pretend dialog, as in an animated "conversation" with a doll or pet, but it more often fulfills other functions for the child.
What those other functions are has been the subject of much research.
Psychologist Jean Piaget suggested that the private speech of children was linked to their developmental immaturity. They lack, he claimed, the ability to take on the perspective of the listener and mold their conversation to suit. Piaget called this egocentric speech.
Private Speech and Developmental Stages
Later researchers questioned this conclusion. In fact, they found that children spent far more time in social speech, talking with adults and with each other, than they did in private speech. Children between the ages of four and eight spend an average of only twenty percent of their time talking to themselves. Perhaps, the researchers theorized, private speech might serve some other purpose.
Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky observed that private speech often tends to mirror social speech. He thought that it was an important part of the child's self development. He and later researchers have described three stages in the development of children's private speech.
In the first stage, private speech follows an action - "I made a boo-boo." In the second stage, it accompanies an action - "It rolls further when I kick it harder." In the third and last stage, it precedes an action - "I am going to jump from the porch to the ground."
Progress from one stage to the next corresponds with the development of thought processes in the child. At the first stage, the child is merely reacting to an event or occurrence. By the last stage, the child is actively planning his actions.