Question
Asked 3 August 2016
What are estimates for the rate of verbal thought (thinking with words)?
UPDATE (SEPTEMBER 2017)
TITLE: The Rate of Verbal Thought: An Hypothesis
AUTHOR: Ronald Netsell, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Communication Sciences and Disorders, Missouri State University, Springfield, MO
The purpose of this report is to develop the hypothesis that the rate of verbal thought is no faster than the rate of inner speech or speech aloud. There is prima-facie evidence that inner speech and speech aloud are direct reflections of verbal thought. Why else would you say “That’s not what I meant” after hearing what you said? Or, “I don’t realize it until I hear it.” This hypothesis was published in 1959 in an article entitled “Evidence that 'thinking aloud' constitutes an externalization of inner speech” (Benjafield, 1969). Others have discussed this hypothesis (Morin, 2009; Glass, 2013).
It’s important to distinguish two types of inner speech: expanded and condensed (Ferneyhough, 2044). Expanded inner speech refers to word-for-word production, while condensed inner speech is fragmented, rapidly crossing topics with one word. Interestingly, and in context of the present report, these two types also have been referred to as “willful voluntary thought” and “verbal mind wandering”, respectively (Perrone-Bertolotti et.al, 2014). Apparently, these authors assumed that their types of inner speech represented verbal thought. The block diagram of Figure 1 distinguishes verbal from nonverbal thought. The idea that the rate of expanded inner speech (willful voluntary thought) was the same as the "rate of verbal thought" arose our recent findings (Netsell et al, 2016). Participants were instructed to “say the first thing that comes to mind.” Although this instruction was not intentionally designed to elicit verbal thought (thinking with words),
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Insert Figure 1 about here
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it appears to have done so. We found that expanded inner speech was 600 msecs faster than speech aloud (p=.0002). We hypothesized that speech aloud was slower because of the time it takes to move the articulators (lips, tongue, etc). This hypothesis has been criticized (e.g. Glass, 2013; Ghitza 2016?).
These findings suggest the rate of neural processing is the same for expanded inner speech and speech aloud. Why wouldn't the rate neural processing of verbal thought be the same (~5.0 syllables/second)? We listen to our verbal thought on-line as we're talking aloud (speaking without 'thinking'). If what we say aloud doesn't match what we’re thinking verbally, we'll say something like "That's not what I meant to say." Then, revise what's said aloud. Obviously, the hypothesis that we think no faster than we talk will be very difficult to test empirically.
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REFERENCES
Benjafield, J. (1969) Evidence that 'thinking aloud' constitutes an externalization of inner speech” Psychonomic Science 15(2):83-84.
Morin, A. (2009). Inner Speech and Consciousness. In: William P. Banks, (Editor), Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Oxford: Elsevier 389-402.
Glass, J. (2013). A neurobiological model of ‘inner speech’ for conscious thought. Journal of Consciousness Studies 20:7-14.
Ferneyhough, C.(2004). Alien voices and inner dialogue: towards a developmental account of auditory verbal hallucinations. New Ideas in Psychology 22:49–68
Perrone-Bertolotti, M. . Rapin,L, J.-P. Lachauxc,d, M. Baciua,b, H. Lœvenbruck (2014). What is that little voice inside my head? Inner speech phenomenology, its role in cognitive performance, and its relation to self-monitoring. Behavioral Brain Research 261:220–239.
Netsell, R., Kleinsasser, S., & Daniel, T. (2016). The rate of expanded inner speech during spontaneous sentence productions. Perceptual & Motor Skills 123(2): 383-393.
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Figure 1. A block diagram model representing the process of transforming thought into words. Thought can be verbal or nonverbal. Verbal thought can be expressed aloud without conscious thought (speaking without thinking). Alternatively, verbal thought can be expressed consciously as expanded inner speech i.e. talking to yourself inside your head (Netsell et al, 2016).
Most recent answer
A related question is: what is the average individual rate of problem solving. Some data suggests that the rate is about 5.6% per thousand years. So if for example a person could be said to have 1000 ideas (a theoretical construct – how do you count ideas?), then after 1000 years the average person would have 1005.6 ideas. Relevant papers for this perspective:
All Answers (11)
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Curious experiment. I've found that I speak at about 120/words per minute and depending on the material a reading level (Flesch Kincaid Scale) I can read at about 360 words per minute at 90% comprehension (Accuplacer test). Moreover, silent readers do not read word for word but scan the text for keywords and semantic patterns. Silent verbal thought therefore is only limited by the speed of light. What are you trying to prove?
Mike
1 Recommendation
University of Wisconsin–Madison
By "expanded inner speech" do you mean subvocal (covert) speech? So long as subjects really are producing covert speech word for word (difficult to confirm), I would agree that covert speech should be faster than overt speech if only because factors such as inertia of the articulators are reduced or eliminated. But I am not convinced that we necessarily think in word patterns that correspond to articulate speech.
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Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
Any individual with his development of Mind,habit & hobbies involve himself in concentration thru this mind & brain remain an observer for himself from the within .
With the result such individual in his contemplation work with his thinking & this thinking process is nothing but the creation of words with him .
With his words & thinking process he gets himself involved in his natural hobby & traits just as literature,music, painting ,& such other hobby .Because of such traits he enjoys his own working environment but he indirectly helps his contribution to the society .
This is my personal opinion
Tampere University
There's a working memory literature of the developmental cognitive psychological variety on the word length effect. The longer the words are in a list, the harder they are to recall, even in adulthood. Similarly there is a correlation between speech rate and word span: the faster the child can repeat a syllable, the higher the word span. There is the notion of a passively decaying phonological store (containing an inner ear and an inner voice code) of 2 s maximum duration refreshed by an articulatory process, the operation of which is limited by the rate of articulatory motor planning. Alan Baddeley's (1986) book Working Memory provides an inspiring review. There could be many other explanations. My attempt in finding a correlation between speech rate and serial recall performance in young adults did not work out however. Correlations with supraspan performance may be touching more strategic mental processes than speech perception and articulatory planning.
Here is an interesting discussion off the auditory list:
--Forwarded Message Attachment--
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:46:09 +0000
Subject: Re: Statistics for word rate in natural speech
As one other piece of information, Miller, Grosjean, & Lomanto (1984), provide statistics on speaking rate (in syllables/second) from a series of interviews with 30 talkers. They give a mean rate of 4.97 syllables/sec, which is similar to the estimates obtained in previous work that they review in the paper.
They also found considerable variation between and within talkers. The rate of 4.97 syl/sec works out to a syllable duration of ~200 ms. Most of the individual talkers varied their syllable durations over a 100 ms range during the course of the interview (i.e. 100-300 ms), resulting in a speaking rate range of 3-10 syllables/second.
Full reference: Miller JL, Grojean F, Lomanto C (1984). Articulation rate and its variability in spontaneous speech: A reanalysis and some implications. Phonetica, 41, 215-225.
Joe
On 6/20/16, 12:48 AM, "AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception on behalf of Kevin Austin" <AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA on behalf of kevin.austin@VIDEOTRON.CA> wrote:
>Thank you.
>
>I’m not a linguist or psycholinguist, so I write only from direct experience.
>
>My reading is that the question is not very 'well-formed', and therefore the answers do not respond to the question.
>
>The question was about ‘words’ [whatever they may happen to be], and the answers start with the idea of syllable, and Jont’s answer seems to be in ‘base phonemic elements’. For example, the two words, “I”, and “stopped”, count two words, each of one syllable, but ‘stopped’ is ccvcc [if the /p/ is pronounced].
>
>10ms [ie 100Hz] seems to be a very small duration, and may only apply to a very limited number of phonemes. I had learned that the shortest time that was reliable for the [sequential] discrimination of auditory events was in the range of 25 to 40 ms — 40 to 25Hz. A ~16Hz limit works out to be around 60-70ms.
>
>But sixteen “what’s”? Try the test. Record sixteen one syllable words, with cv or vc forms: be, am, so, it, two, aught, tea, ear, tie . . etc Most of these are two phonemes, or three if a diphthong is considered a grouped vowel, as in the word ‘tie’. Say them quickly. Edit them into a sequence with no gaps, and shorten the sequence to be 1,000ms. Is it possible to do sequential segmentation? leaving aside the articulatory problems.
>
>Record: “I spied the top pie”, and “North-eastern Carolinian national seashore”. Both are ‘five words’. For interest, edit out the words: ‘top', ‘pie', ‘Carolinian', and ‘national’. Tricks such as producing the /d/ in spied as being the stopped diphthong /ai/, and the contracting of the /p/, and the /n/, likely increase the rate of delivery in natural speech, but most likely mostly in informal contexts.
>
>“What was the question again?” cv ccvc cv ccvccvcvcvc
>
>
>Kevin
>
>
>
>
>> On 2016, Jun 19, at 8:03 AM, Jont Allen <jontalle@illinois.edu> wrote:
>>
>> All,
>>
>> A comment that I hope is helpful.
>>
>> In our speech work we have learned, from extensive analysis, that the fastest temporal resolution that speech is processed at, by the auditory system, is about 10 [ms].
>> That means that the natural temporal units for talking about speech (or singing) is in centiseconds [cs]. For example, the plosive burst of say /ka/ is about 1-2 [cs].
>> I have not found very many examples of less than 1 [cs], as the perception deteriorates quickly when you go below (shorter that) 1 [cs].
>>
>> Based the numbers below for rapper Big Boi, 379 syllables/m is about 16 [cs]
>> 1000*60/379 = 15.8
>>
>> This seems like a nice way to quantify this rate. Its close to the perceptual lower limit of 1 [sc]. A full syllable (CV, VC) of 16 seems pretty short.
>>
>> Jont Allen
>>
>> On 06/18/2016 11:39 PM, Arun Chandra wrote:
>>> In Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro", Bartolo sings his revenge aria at about quarter == 112mm, which means the syllables are going by in triplets at about 336 per minute.
>>>
>>> in Rossini's "Barber of Seville", the character Bartolo (the same character, again) sings his accusing aria to Rosina (his ward) at about quarter == 116mm, which means the sixteenth note syllables are going by at about 464 per minute.
>>>
>>> the "Modern Major General's Song" by Gilbert and Sullivan goes by at about 184mm, so it's syllables are about 368 per minute.
>>>
>>> arun
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6/18/16 4:07 AM, Huron, David wrote:
>>>> We have a wide tolerance for speech with "normal" paces ranging between 170 and 260 syllables per minute.
>>>> (Yuan, Liberman & Cieri, 2006; Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation. INTER SPEECH conference Proc.)
>>>>
>>>> Music exhibits an enormous range of lyrical pace. Judy Garland's rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" clocks in at a leisurely 64 syllables per minute. By contrast, in "Ms. Jackson" by OutKast, rapper Big Boi reaches an extraordinary 379 syllables per minute.
>>>>
>>>> -David Huron with Nat Condit-Schultz
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA] on behalf of Bruno L. Giordano [brungio@GMAIL.COM]
>>>> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 8:32 AM
>>>> To: AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
>>>> Subject: Statistics for word rate in natural speech
>>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> I am looking for published statistics on average word rate in natural speech (words/minute).
>>>>
>>>> Is there some golden standard reference for this?
>>>>
>>>> Thank you!
>>>>
>>>> Bruno
>>>>
>>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>>> Bruno L. Giordano, PhD
>>>> Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology
>>>> 58 Hillhead Street, University of Glasgow
>>>> Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland
>>>> T +44 (0) 141 330 5484
>>>> Www: http://www.brunolgiordano.net
>>>> Email charter: http://www.emailcharter.org/
>>>>
VERI BOOKS, LLC
Hello Ron:
Your hypothesis of the rate of thought at 5 syllables/sec may assume that we think in syllables which I doubt. Also you conflate thought with speech which may or may not be true. Finally, you've been trained as a materialist --- all of us old fogies have been --- and assume that thought is the epiphenomonon of the physical nervous system, which also may or may not be true. .
Respectfully,
M. Tang
1 Recommendation
Syllables are a good example of symbols. Anything that can be represented in mind and be mapped to any other thought, object, function, is suited as a symbol. In Chinese, many words are one syllable long. For thinking we need an open alphabet with millions of symbols, but there exists only a limited reservoir of speakable syllables. Are there unspeakable syllables? Imagine you extend the set of Chinese characters by inventing new ones with more brush strokes. Millions of new characters. After having learned their shape, can you recognize them without being able to give them a name? Obviously this is possible. You can "read" invented characters by scanning over a sheet of paper and recognizing each character without the necessity to speak any character out. There is the business of speed reading. Skilled speed readers can get to a rate of thousands of words per minute. They avoid activating muscles while they internally go through words. But speed reading seems only to be a sophisticated filter that throws Information away instead of processing it. What if you go through a math book in an hour?
Some literature on speed limits in thought
("40 ms to refresh one memory item"):
references
Regards,
Joachim
Missouri State University
Regarding Ray Kent's question, the answer was in my first sentence above:
"Recently, we found the rate of "expanded inner speech" (word-for-word) to be slightly faster than speech aloud."
A related question is: what is the average individual rate of problem solving. Some data suggests that the rate is about 5.6% per thousand years. So if for example a person could be said to have 1000 ideas (a theoretical construct – how do you count ideas?), then after 1000 years the average person would have 1005.6 ideas. Relevant papers for this perspective:
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