Charles Fernyhough

It's also made it obvious to me that we're really bad at judging what's going on in our heads.

I'd like to celebrate the diversity of human minds.

I think we are so different.

I think it's wonderful that there is this diversity and we can celebrate that diversity.

I wouldn't ever want to set out and say to people that they should improve their inner speech.

But what I would say is that sometimes inner speech can have a negative side.

And if your inner speech is bothering you, if it's excessively critical, it can be wrapped up in all kinds of stuff that isn't particularly good for your mental health.

And I'd say if that's bothering you, there are maybe things that you can do to rethink it.

And if people have any concerns or want to know more about hearing voices, we have a website called understandingvoices.com where you'll find a whole bunch of different kinds of information about voice hearing, including how people make sense of voice hearing, what people do to seek help for voice hearing, and so on.

Thank you both.

We've shown you can do it.

Not just us, teams all around the world have shown you can study this stuff.

You can have a science of it.

Well, if you watch any small child, you're really likely to see them talking to themselves.

Yes.

So when kids are talking to themselves out loud, we call that private speech.

And the idea is that it's the precursor.

It's the thing that comes before inner speech.

So the inner speech that you and I probably experience, or may not, where that comes from developmentally is from private speech.

And in turn, that private speech came from the social dialogues that kid enjoyed when they were growing up.