Thinking aloud seems unnatural and difficult to most subjects. The present study explored the relation between Ease in Thinking Aloud, verbal fluency, Self-talk, and Big Five personality traits for a heterogeneous sample of 101 German-speaking adults (50 women and 51 men). Ease in Thinking Aloud positively correlated with scores on verbal fluency (r = .31) and Conscientiousness (r = 38). The discussion considers implications for further research on ease in thinking aloud.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BenjafieldJ. (1969) Evidence that “thinking aloud” constitutes an externalization of inner speech. Psychonomic Science, 15, 83–84.
2.
BorkenauP.OstendorfF. (1993) NEO-Fuenf-Faktoren Inventar (NEO-FFI) nach Costa und McCrae. Goettingen: Hogrefe.
3.
BrinthauptT. M.HeinM. B.KramerT. E. (under revision) The Self-talk Scale: Development, higher-order factor analysis, and validation. Journal of Personality Assessment.
4.
DanemanM. (1991) Working memory as a predictor of verbal fluency. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 20, 445–464.
5.
Do LamA. (2004) Erhoeht lautes Denken die Selbstaufmerksamkeit? [Does thinking aloud increase self-awareness?]. Unpublished diploma thesis, Fachrichtung Psychologie, Univer. of the Saarland, Saarbruecken.
6.
DuncanR. M.CheyneJ. A. (1999) Incidence and functions of self-reported private speech in young adults: A self-verbalization questionnaire. Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, 31, 133–136.
7.
EricssonK. A. (2003) Valid and non-reactive verbalizations of thoughts during performance of tasks: Towards a solution to the central problems of introspection as a source of scientific data. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, 1–18.
8.
EricssonK. A.SimonH. A. (1993) Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
9.
GilhoolyK. J. (1986–1987) Individual differences in thinking-aloud performance. Current Psychological Research and Reviews, 5, 328–334.
10.
LunsfordR. (2004) Private speech during multimodal human-computer interaction. Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces, State College, PA, October.
11.
NielsenJ. (1993) Usability engineering. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
12.
PomerantzJ. (2003) Question taxonomies for digital reference. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse Univer., Syracuse, New York.
13.
SaamannD. (2001) Kognitive Prozessvariablen und Lautes Denken: Individuelle Unterschiede in der Verbalisierung [Cognitive process variables and thinking aloud: Individual differences in verbalization]. In SchneiderJ. F. (Ed.), Lautes Denken—Prozessanalysen bei Selbst- und Fremdeinschaetzung [Thinking aloud: Analyzing the processes of rating self and others]. Weimar: Dadder. Pp. 125–141.
14.
SchneiderJ. F. (2002) Relations among self-talk, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge. Psychological Reports, 91, 807–812.
15.
SchneiderJ. F.PospeschillM.RangerJ. (2005) Does self-consciousness mediate the relation between self-talk and self-knowledge?Psychological Reports, 96, 387–396.
16.
SiegristM. (1994) Selbstaufmerksamkeit, innere Gespräche und Wohlbefinden [Self-awareness, inner speech, and a sense of well-being]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univer. of Zuerich, Switzerland.
17.
SiegristM. (1995) Inner speech as a cognitive process mediating self-consciousness and inhibiting self-deception. Psychological Reports, 76, 259–265.
18.
StemmerB. (1991) What's on a C-test taker's mind? Mental processes in C-test taking. Bochum: Universitaetsverlag Brockmeyer.
19.
Van SomerenM. W.BarnardY. F.SandbergJ. A. C. (1994) The think aloud method: A practical guide to modelling cognitive processes. London: Academic Press.
