Emergent completion of multistep instructions via joint control
Covert self-talk is not a one-size-fits-all aid—visual sequences need it more than tactile ones.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Vosters et al. (2020) asked whether silent self-talk helps people follow long instructions. They used an alternating-treatments design in a lab. One condition blocked talking by having people say 'ba-ba' the whole time. The other let them think quietly.
Tasks used either pictures or raised shapes. Everyone had to tap the items in the exact order given. The team watched how often the order was right under each setup.
What they found
Blocking speech hurt picture sequencing more than shape sequencing. Visual tasks fell apart when covert speech was busy. Tactile tasks stayed fairly steady.
The mixed result hints that silent self-talk is extra important when you see the items. Touch-based lists may lean on other cues.
How this fits with other research
Hozella et al. (2022) extends the idea to daily life. They taught students with autism to whisper instructions to themselves. All five kids learned full living-skills chains and kept going on new jobs. Their real-world success pairs with the lab finding that self-talk powers multi-step work.
Vie et al. (2017) used a similar lab design. When kids had to tact pictures out loud, later recall rose. Both papers show that some form of verbal activity greases the memory wheels.
Duker et al. (1991) showed cross-modal transfer of stimulus control. Vosters adds a twist: blocking one modality's helper skill (covert speech) hits visual tasks harder than tactile ones. The two studies together warn us that 'emergent' performance may break if the covert piece is missing.
Why it matters
Check which sense your learner leans on. If the task is mostly visual, protect their chance to self-talk. Skip vocal demands while they plan. If the task is hands-on, a little background chatter may not hurt. Try a quick test: block and unblock speech during a visual chain. If scores drop, build in rehearsal time or use tactile prompts to share the load.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The inclusion of private events in the philosophy of our science is integral to avoid dualism and remain objective rather than making assumptions about an unseen mind. However, the inclusion of behaviors and stimuli which cannot be observed in an analysis poses obvious issues. One established method of studying covert behavior is to examine tasks that are presumed to require verbal mediation, and observing how a participant's performance is affected when they are required to speak out loud during the task (often called "blocking"), again presuming this will make it difficult or impossible to simultaneously talk to yourself covertly. This study investigated the effects of vocal blocking on a sequencing task, or lining things up in a specified order. In one experiment, the items sequenced were abstract line drawings, and a second experiment used differently textured fabric stimuli (or "tactile cards"). In the second experiment, participants learned to tact and then sequence the tactile stimuli while they were blindfolded. The effect of vocal blocking on putative covert rehearsal was dissimilar across the two modalities of the experiments. This preliminary study provides insight into the nature of covert behavior as it relates to different senses and opens questions about the generality of studies examining covert mediation.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2020 · doi:10.1002/jaba.670