There’s no denying the fact that at least once every few days, most of us talk to ourselves. Many talk this way even several times a day. Scientists have wondered about the purpose of this seemingly irrational behaviour.

Previous studies of children suggested that the words they speak to themselves can help control their own behaviour. An example is the situation where children talk themselves, step by step, through tying shoelaces, as if reminding themselves to focus on what they are doing with their hands.

In the new study, described in the "Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology", psychologists Gary Lupyan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Daniel Swingley University of Pennsylvania (U.S.) conducted a series of experiments to check if talking to one’s self can help in finding objects. They were inspired by their observations of people trying to find something (like a peanut butter jar on the shelf, or a piece of butter in own refrigerator) and very often muttering under their breath.

In one experiment, they showed 20 volunteers pictures of various objects and asked them to find one particular object. In the case of some participants, computer screen displayed a bar with the name of an item to find ("Please find pot"). Others were asked to search for an object while repeating its name out loud. It turned out that talking to themselves helps people more quickly identify the desired object.

In another experiment, participants were doing virtual shopping, during which they were shown images of objects often present on store shelves on computer screens. They were asked to find, as quickly as possible, all images of a specific object, like all bags of apples, or Diet Coke bottles. Also in this case, muttering the name of the object helped in the search, even if the object was very familiar.

The experiment details can be found at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17470218.2011.647039

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