ABSTRACT
It has long been recognized that the distinction between communication for others (external speech) and communication for oneself (inner speech), relatively sharply maintained in normal adults, is more or less lacking in young children. One of the earliest accounts of this lack of differentiation between inner and external speech in young children was in terms of the concept of “egocentrism.” “Egocentric speech,” particularly as characterized by J. Piaget (190), is speech manifested by a child in the earliest phases of the process of socialization. Piaget argued that as socialized speech becomes increasingly prevalent, egocentric speech declines.
