Private Speech and Self-Regulation. A Commentary on Frauenglass and Diaz

The present article is a critique of an earlier article by Frauenglass and Diaz (1985) on the interaction between private speech and cognition which appeared in this journal. In their study, Frauenglass and Diaz follow previous researchers in establishing a typology of private speech in which some categories of private verbalization are seen as relevant to the conduct of cognitive tasks while others are not. Although we do not disagree with the facts as set out by Frauenglass and Diaz, we argue that their interpretation of these facts misses the point with regard to how private speech is seen to regulate cognitive activity within Vygotskian psycholinguistic theory. Essentially, we claim that all forms of private speech are regulatory and that what matters is not a structural taxonomy of functions but the semantic content of private speech.