writing and the objective nature of attention, might easily account for its being overlooked in the introspections. This much, however, seems clear, that inner speech rises into distinct consciousness whenever the meaning of what is being written is not at once present. Whenever the ideational processes resulting in or constituting meaning are blocked, inner speech at once comes into clear consciousness. And probably also when anything hinders attention to the writing. But, although the introspections are inconclusive upon this point, there are indications that, in spite of its greater prominence, inner speech is little more than an accompaniment when the copy and conditions are unfamiliar and difficult and that it is more distinctly a cue when the copy is familiar and the conditions easy. Evidence for this is found in the constancy with which the eye is kept upon the copy when the former conditions prevail and its desertion of the copy in the latter conditions. That is, when the eye has to be kept upon the copy the writing becomes more nearly an act of drawing; in fact that is what it amounts to in the upside-down writing where the primary difficulty is one of visualization.[1] If this view is correct, it follows that inner speech unaccompanied by ready meaning, does not in itself serve as a cue. The inner speech, in this case is probably primarily of service in the development of meaning and not in the direct control of the movement. More exactly it is not so much a control factor as an initiatory element; it is the element with the appearance of which meaning is primarily developed.[2]
The facts brought out in this set of experiments tend to show in connection with the preceding experiments, that in a general way the content of consciousness changes rather than diminishes
- ↑ The copy was, of course, not presented upside-down
- ↑ It is, however, not to be assumed that the same explanation is offered for the function of the auditory image (which is always present in inner speech and constitutes an aspect of the latter) in the case of actual speech. That the auditory image has a direct control over speech regardless of meaning in any specific sense is readily demonstrated by the child's ability to enunciate more correctly than most adult beginners the sounds of an unknown language. That the auditory image is primary in such control is also evidenced by the methods employed in teaching deaf mutes to speak. Cf. Farrar: Arnold's Ed. of the Deaf, pp. 127-128. This position is uniformly supported by reports of methods employed in teaching deaf mutes to speak at several institutions for the education of this class of defectives. This statement from one of them is illustrative. "Absolutely deaf children always remember the visual appearance of the word on nose and lips and associate this with the feeling produced in them when they give the same sound. Only the blind deaf make a constant practice of touching another's lips. Those who have some hearing left, probably have an idea of the sound of the word when they speak it. This largely takes precedence of all other impressions."
