Talking to yourself makes your brain work more efficiently
In one study, psychologists Daniel Swigley and Gary Lupyan hypothesized that talking to yourself was actually beneficial.
In one experiment, Swigley and Lupya gave 20 people the name of an object (like a loaf of bread or an apple), which they were told to find in the supermarket. During the first set of trials, the participants were bound to silence. In the second set, they repeated the object’s name out loud as they looked for it in the store.
Test subjects found the object with greater ease when they spoke to themselves while searching. Saying things out loud sparks memory. It solidifies the end game and makes it tangible. But talking out loud to yourself helps you only when you know what you need. In this case, speaking the object’s name out loud is helpful only when you’re familiar with its appearance.
According to Lupyan: Speaking to yourself isn’t always helpful — if you don’t really know what an object looks like, saying its name can have no effect or actually slow you down. If, on the other hand, you know that bananas are yellow and have a particular shape, by saying banana, you’re activating these visual properties in the brain to help you find them.
- See more at: http://www.the-open-mind.com/science-says-people-who-talk-to-themselves-are-geniuses/#sthash.IHeGTfUn.dpuf