Summary.— Recent empirical work in social cognition suggests that in building a self-concept people make inferences about themselves based on overt behavior or private thoughts and feelings. This article addresses the question of how, exactly, people make these inferences about themselves and raises the possibility that they do so through self-talk. It is proposed that the more on talks to oneself to construct a selfimage, the more this image will gain coherence and sophistication. A correlational study was conducted to explore (...) the relation between richness of the self-concept (using the W-A-Y) and natural disposition to talk to oneself (using a pilot questionnaire). A moderate but positive correlation of .30 is obtained. The article concludes with clinical implications. (shrink)

This article raises the question of how we acquire self-information through self-talk, i.e., of how self-talk mediates self-awareness. It is first suggested that two social mechanisms leading to self-awareness could be reproduced by self-talk: engaging in dialogues with ourselves, in which we talk to fictive persons, would permit an internalization of others' perspectives; and addressing comments to ourselves about ourselves, as others do toward us, would allow an acquisition of self-information. Secondly, it is proposed that self-observation is possible only if (...) there exists a distance between the individual and any potentially observable self-aspect; self-talk, because it conveys self-information under a different form , would create a redundancy -- and with it, a wedge -- within the self. (shrink)

Two patients with cerebral commissurotomy were tested with visual input lateralized to left or right half of the visual field by an opaque hemifield screen set in the focal plane of an optical system mounted on a scleral contact lens which allowed prolonged exposure and ocular scanning of complex visual arrays. Key personal and affect-laden stimuli along with items for assessing general social knowledgability were presented among neutral unknowns in visual arrays with 4-9 choices. Selective manual and associated emotional responses (...) obtained from the minor hemisphere to pictures of subject's self, relatives, pets and belongings, and of public, historical and religious figures and personalities from the entertainment world revealed a characteristic social, political, personal and self-awareness comparable roughly to that of the major hemisphere of the same subject. (shrink)

In this commentary I use recent empirical evidence and theoretical analyses concerning the importance of language and the meaning of self-recognition to reevaluate the claim that the right mute hemisphere in commissurotomized patients possesses a full consciousness. Preliminary data indicate that inner speech is deeply linked to self-awareness; also, four hypotheses concerning the crucial role inner speech plays in self-focus are presented. The legitimacy of self-recognition as a strong operationalization of self-awareness in the right hemisphere is also questioned on the (...) basis that it might rather tap a preexisting body awareness having little to do with an access to mental events. I conclude with the formulation of an alternative interpretation of commissurotomy according to self-awareness — a “complete” one in the left hemisphere and a “primitive” one in the right hemisphere. (shrink)

This article raises the question of how self-talk mediates self-awareness. It is argued that the process of acquiring self-information can be seen as a problem-solving task, and that self-talk can facilitate this process (as it does for any other problem) by promoting a precise formulation and approach to the problem, by adequately focusing attention on the task, and through constant self-evaluations. A complementary analysis of the possible characteristics of an effective internal dialogue in the acquisition of self-information is undertaken. Among (...) other things, taking others' perspective through self-talk, possessing a rich vocabulary about oneself, and paying attention to the content of one's self-talk are believed to be important in that respect. Clinical implications raised by this analysis are also discussed. (shrink)