Emergencia del habla privada: Una comparativa entre dos situaciones comunicativas infantiles

Abstract

We study the emergence of private speech as a tool for self-regulation. Our aim is to explore the private speech’s cognitive function in different communicative situations. The study reported here was conducted longitudinally with ten pairs of children. They were evaluated at the age of 4;6 and 6;6 years. The results show an increase in private forms between 4 and 6 years in the referencial communicative task but not in the Lego task. The discussion of the results leads us to reconsider critically the theory that there is a variation in private speech with age. It seems more accurate to speak of a pattern that is highly sensitive to contextual aspects of the task, including its cognitive demands and the communicative context.