TY - JOUR

T1 - “Stay focused!”

T2 - The role of inner speech in maintaining attention during a boring task.

AU - Nedergaard, Johanne

AU - Skewes, Joshua Charles

AU - Wallentin, Mikkel

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Is inner speech involved in sustaining attention, and is this reflected in response times for stimulus detection? In Experiment 1, we measured response times to an infrequently occurring stimulus (a black dot appearing at 1–3 min intervals) and subsequently asked participants to report on the character of their inner experience at the time the stimulus appeared. Our main preregistered hypothesis was that there would be an interaction between inner speech and task relevance of thought with reaction times being the fastest on prompts preceded by task-relevant inner speech. This would indicate that participants could use their inner voice to maintain performance on the task. With generalized linear mixed-effects models fitted to a gamma distribution, we found significant effects of task relevance but no interaction with inner speech. However, using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis method, we found that trials preceded by task-relevant inner speech additionally displayed lower standard deviation and lower mode (independently of the main effect of task relevance), suggestive of increased processing efficiency. Due to deviations from the preregistered sampling and analysis procedures, we replicated our findings in Experiment 2. Our results add support to the hypothesis that inner speech serves a functional role in top-down attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

AB - Is inner speech involved in sustaining attention, and is this reflected in response times for stimulus detection? In Experiment 1, we measured response times to an infrequently occurring stimulus (a black dot appearing at 1–3 min intervals) and subsequently asked participants to report on the character of their inner experience at the time the stimulus appeared. Our main preregistered hypothesis was that there would be an interaction between inner speech and task relevance of thought with reaction times being the fastest on prompts preceded by task-relevant inner speech. This would indicate that participants could use their inner voice to maintain performance on the task. With generalized linear mixed-effects models fitted to a gamma distribution, we found significant effects of task relevance but no interaction with inner speech. However, using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis method, we found that trials preceded by task-relevant inner speech additionally displayed lower standard deviation and lower mode (independently of the main effect of task relevance), suggestive of increased processing efficiency. Due to deviations from the preregistered sampling and analysis procedures, we replicated our findings in Experiment 2. Our results add support to the hypothesis that inner speech serves a functional role in top-down attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

U2 - 10.1037/xhp0001112

DO - 10.1037/xhp0001112

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 36892880

VL - 49

SP - 451

EP - 464

JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

SN - 0096-1523

IS - 4

ER -