How we monitor our own thoughts: Inner speech and inner hearing

This thesis broadly reviews the current literature on voice-like thought. I observe two major lines of explaining the phenomenon of inner speech (‘the little voice inside our heads’), which are perception-based and action-based approaches. The former focuses on inner speech as an auditory experience, and the latter focuses on inner speech being an act of speaking. This thesis discusses a currently dominant action-based model on inner speech (the forward model). The model includes a theory of how errors in inner speech generation can lead to clinical symptoms commonly found in people diagnosed with schizophrenia, such as auditory verbal hallucinations (‘hearing voices’). The way I will approach the topic is to find key assumptions on which the forward model is based, and discuss the concepts used in these assumptions. I argue mainly that inner hearing as a concept should be considered in further developing the model, and that the definitions of sense of agency, sense of ownership,...Show moreThis thesis broadly reviews the current literature on voice-like thought. I observe two major lines of explaining the phenomenon of inner speech (‘the little voice inside our heads’), which are perception-based and action-based approaches. The former focuses on inner speech as an auditory experience, and the latter focuses on inner speech being an act of speaking. This thesis discusses a currently dominant action-based model on inner speech (the forward model). The model includes a theory of how errors in inner speech generation can lead to clinical symptoms commonly found in people diagnosed with schizophrenia, such as auditory verbal hallucinations (‘hearing voices’). The way I will approach the topic is to find key assumptions on which the forward model is based, and discuss the concepts used in these assumptions. I argue mainly that inner hearing as a concept should be considered in further developing the model, and that the definitions of sense of agency, sense of ownership, intention, and source-monitoring need to be sharpened. This review aims to contribute to mapping our verbal mental experiences and their interrelations, which will ultimately be useful in clinical contexts. Hence, this work is meant to guide future research projects and inspire ongoing discussion about our verbal mental experiences.Show less

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How we monitor our own thoughts: Inner speech and inner hearing