Maryellen MacDonald
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
There's some suggestion that that thinking or talking out loud while problem solving in your native strongest language versus your second language, even if you're still fluent, it's not as good as your strongest language. There's some suggestion there that problem solving works somewhat differently in that people who are talking in their second language,
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
are more logical than in their native language. I am not really convinced about the explanations for this, but the most popular explanation is that people are more emotional in their native language. It's what they grew up with as a little kid. It's where their original family ties lie. And so there's more emotionality in thinking through a problem speaking in their native language.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
But for those who have a second language handy that they learned a bit later in life, they don't have that many emotional connections and they're able to more home in on just the most logical aspects of the story. That's the best explanation that exists right now. I think it's a kind of new effect and it needs a bit more checking up on.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
So because talking is so important to the person doing the talking, it follows that a kid's talking is really important to their own cognitive and language development. I think this is an important message because parents have heard a lot of messages about how it is so important for the parents to talk to the kid.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And they haven't heard the message that actually the kid's own talking and the amount of back and forth real conversation that parents have with their kids, the kid's own communication is important. at least as important as the amount of language that the parent is spreading out in the environment to the kid. And that is not only interesting, but it has consequences for parenting today.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
If a parent thinks, well, language input is important, they could talk to their kid. Great. Or they could hand their kid a tablet to listen to a story on YouTube for kids, or they could hand their kid their phone to listen to somebody talking on the phone. And
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
All of these media all have input if they've got some language in them, but what they don't have is the opportunity for the kid to talk back. And a lot of parents are passing phones and tablets and TV to their kids at increasing rates these days. At the same time as the National Association of Pediatricians are advising that little kids should not be having this kind of media.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And a primary reason why they shouldn't be having media at young ages is because the kids need to be talking themselves. When the kid's watching something on a tablet, the kid's not talking and the parent's not talking to them. And that's a big impact on parenting and understanding the kids need to talk is a really big thing that I want people to understand.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Yeah. So earlier we talked about how when you talk, you have to get the right words out, which requires a lot of concentration. And kids need to have that exercise. So Educators talk about certain kinds of lessons in school being a, quote, desirable difficulty. It works the kid's brain hard and it has desirable consequences.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Their brain gets a workout and they get better and learn more and more skilled and so on. Talking is a desirable difficulty for little kids. It's got all that concentrating to get the words. It's managing the back and forth of conversations and turn taking. It's planning out what they want to say. It's the exercise of turning some internal idea into their actual speech.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And all of those have a desirable difficulty that tunes the kid's perception and ability to concentrate and what's called executive function, their ability to regulate their emotions and plan ahead and so on.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
That's right. And then they get to school and school discourages talking. And there are all sorts of studies that show that talking actually boosts learning. There's pretty much nothing you can't learn better if you're talking about it. And yet our school situation is such that with very few exceptions, children are told to be quiet and listen to the teacher. And Don't talk.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And all this wisdom we have about how talking benefits the talker really runs up against not only those misapprehensions in parenting about why it would be okay to hand your kid a tablet, but also all these misapprehensions in the education system where people think that the ideal form of learning is to sit quietly. And it's not. It's to engage by talking.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
When we're in some intense emotional state, we don't often know exactly what we're feeling. We might be able to say upset, but that could be lots of things. It turns out that doing the work to talk and specifically name what we're feeling clarifies our emotions for us. Therapists ask, and how does that make you feel?
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
in part because the therapist wants to know how the client is feeling, but the therapist is asking that question because the act of naming the emotion is beneficial to the talker themselves. So when you're feeling upset, try to stop and say to yourself or to somebody else or write it down exactly what it is you're feeling.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Is it that you are disappointed about your brother, you're angry, you're worried? If you have to go through the possibilities and try to home in by talking about it, exactly what it is that you feel. Studies show that people who name their emotions are better able to cope with whatever it is that is making them upset.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And don't forget to hit the follow button.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Hi, Mike. It's good to be here.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
What we don't usually recognize is that talking has some very interesting, very positive effects on the person doing the talking, which actually have nothing to do with communicating with other people. So, talking sharpens our attention, the talker's attention, regulates the talker's emotions, helps us pursue our goals, and more good things. And you don't even have to be talking to someone.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
You can get these benefits by talking to yourself, writing it down, or just talking in your head.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Well, we know this because we scientists who study talking have looked at how talking works and why it has these effects that it has. And we get these benefits from talking really because of the way that talking works in your brain. So suppose you want to say something like, it's really important that I finish this report today.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Now, we have a pile of about 50,000 words we have stored in our memory. And to say this particular sentence at that particular moment you want to say it, we need to find those specific words, report, today, important, that sort of stuff. And only those words. We don't need a bunch of other words gumming up the talking.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
It's a really tall order to get just those words out of our 50,000 word haystack of memory. And the way we do it is to concentrate very hard mentally, even if you're not aware of this concentration. concentrate on the idea we want to convey. And this concentration makes it possible to find the relevant words for talking.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
The consequence, the additional consequence of you concentrating on the idea is that it then helps you maintain focus on it. Having said that this crucial report needs to get finished, you're more likely to buckle down and work on it.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
People have actually studied, it's a very hard thing to study, but researchers have studied what goes on when people were talking in their head. The first interesting thing to know is that some people report there is no voice
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
To talk and specifically name what we're feeling clarifies our emotions for us. Therapists ask, and how does that make you feel? Because the act of naming the emotion is beneficial to the talker.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
in their head and there is no talking in their head and we don't know quite what's up with that because the vast majority of people report that they can hear a voice in their head when they're thinking to themselves or when they're reading to themselves but for those people who do report that there's a voice in their head.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
We can detect tiny muscle movements in the mouth that suggest that, in fact, they're doing part of the process of talking up to but not including actually having the articulation of the words come out of their mouths.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And there's also really fascinating research studying patients who have strokes and other kinds of illnesses that keep them from being able to talk anymore, where scientists are trying to turn brain waves into a computer voice talking, where the patient's talking in their head.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
drives the electrical signal connected to this computerized voice so that the person who can't physically talk themselves anymore can generate some messages. And there's no way that that's going to work unless there's some talking in your head that is driving that system.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Right. So I would say you've identified two out of the three kinds of levels of talking to yourself. There's the possibly fleeting one in your head. There's the talking out loud to yourself that, as you say, sounds more... important and maybe lasting. And the third one that researchers have identified is writing it down in a journal, in a letter to yourself, in a letter to somebody else.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
The act of writing is slower, more deliberative, and has even more of this sticky, long-lasting feeling. You can probably make your even talking in your head feeling more like talking out loud by really concentrating on it and trying to do it strongly, in a way.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And in fact, in sports psychology, athletes are coached to talk to themselves, usually in their head, but out loud if they feel like it, to boost their attention, squeeze out more focus, more determination, better performance in whatever athletic endeavor they're doing.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And the coaching helps them take that fleeting thought and be more deliberative about what it is that they're saying to themselves, because they don't really have the opportunity to stop and write it down in the middle of whatever athletic thing they're doing.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Yeah, most people do. And little electrodes put on people's mouths while they're reading for most people show just slight activation of, for example, your lips or your tongue as you're reading, even though you're not a person who's reading out loud.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Apparently, and this is a really new area, there are a subset of people who say they don't have a voice in their head, either when they're thinking or when they are reading. And the people reading who don't hear a voice in their head seem to just get to the meaning of what they're reading.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And those of us who do have a voice in our head are probably getting to the meaning and the sounds of the words. So it seems to be possible that readers can sometimes just get to meaning without having a conscious awareness of sounds in their head when they're reading.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
That is absolutely right. And child development researchers think that external talking to themselves is kind of the on-ramp to being able to talk in their heads. So to the extent that we understand this in little kids, You're right. They talk all the time. They are like narrating the play-by-play and the color commentary of their day or what they're doing.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
And that little running monologue eventually, age five, age six, something like that, starts to become more internal and less external talking. And for the most part, internal talking is more efficient. It runs faster in the head.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
is a behavior that some people believe they never do, but actually do do, yes.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
Yes. I think that particular talking is an outgrowth of a kind of vocalization that we have, and in fact, many, many other animals have. It's a... surprise reaction to a stimulus or like a bird hitting us like, ah, and that is involuntary. And it's very adaptive because if anybody else is around and you scream, ah, somebody is going to come help you or see what's the matter. And
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
ah, what was that? That's sort of both the involuntary and a little bit of, yeah, talking out loud that's not communicated, but is just basically expressing the surprise of the situation.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
I could do it more.
Something You Should Know
Why You Should Talk More Often & How People Get Brainwashed
No, no. I think we're good.