I thought it was a personal quirk, but as the years have gone by, I’ve caught myself talking out loud on occasion.
And it seems I’m not alone in doing so.
What’s up with this? Are we just weirdos?
Monday, November 14, 2016
Stymied by a Tricky Problem? Why Talking Out Loud Might Help.
I thought it was a personal quirk, but as the years have gone by, I’ve caught myself talking out loud on occasion.
And it seems I’m not alone in doing so.
What’s up with this? Are we just weirdos?
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6 comments:
Hmmmm. So it seems like this article is trying to articulate the fact that you problem-solve most efficiently not only when you are talking aloud to yourself, but also when you are asking yourself questions and why you are doing what you are doing. Interesting. I talk to myself an often lot, especially when I'm in a kerfuffle, but I wonder if writing out thoughts on paper instead of speaking the thought process changes the results. I think that speaking aloud while trying to figure a problem out is very similar to pacing around the room when thinking and to drawing out creative ideas as opposed to keeping them locked up in your mind. I think that when you speak (or draw), you have a more open stream of consciousness which then allows for better creative problem solving. If you come up with possible solutions in your brain, but that's where they ever stay, you will take a longer time coming to an end result. I am also not surprised that the silence method of the five worked the least effective. I don't know how to exactly describe this, but I feel like when you're stuck inside your head, there is only one voice working. When you allow yourself to speak aloud and problem solve, there are two voices-- there's the possible solution coming out of your mouth, and there's the next voice formulating another possible solution in your mind.
While I’m not sure how much I’d throw faith at the scientific merit of this particular study, I definitely subscribe to the concept of verbally conceptualizing the task at hand in real time. I fairly often do it, and though I think it opens doors to other problems (there’s this funny thing that happens where one might think out loud in front of a person instead of effectively discussing with them) I think that there certainly should be room for thinking out loud in one’s life. It certainly forces one to think through each step on a more detailed and thorough level than keeping it all in your head does. Part of it is also that it requires more cohesion than the more abstract mind space might necessitate, but also it provides one with the chance to kind of dry run how they want to present the idea to another individual in a relatively low stakes an informal way. By far the most rewarding collaborations I’ve been a part of have been when my team members and I are able to construct ideas by collectively sharing a headspace verbally in a way that is not dissimilar to thinking out loud or talking to one’s self.
I’m a firm believer in talking to myself when I am trying to figure something out, if for no other reason than it helps me remember whatever my last thought was. I assumed that I was a general think aloud type person, but after reading the categories used in this study, I realized that most of my process thinking is if-then. I suppose I’m biased, but the metacognitive and problem-focused strategies seem like they would just slow you down and lead to second guessing. I’m not putting that much weight into the conclusions drawn from this study, partially because the researchers divided people into each group and tasked them with the thinking out loud strategy. Dividing people by the strategy they normal use might have yielded different results.
I am extremely interested in this article. I have never heard of anyone looking deeply into the why and how of thinking aloud, but I did find that it helped me to block out any other thoughts and focus on the task at hand. As the article said, talking aloud slows you down. One can not think as fast as they can speak, so we are able to process the task at hand better. I find this distresses me a little bit either. I love the different methods of talking to yourself. I really look forward to observing my own personal behaviors and applying these methods!
So I can't fight the findings of this study but what I can say is that I find it very annoying when people talk to themselves while working in 33. Regardless of that though, this article was very interesting to me. The results don't surprise me at all because immediately I could rationalize why talking out loud would help you process ideas and complete tasks more efficiently than silently working. The study however, didn't seem fool proof or thoroughly explored but the findings are at least anecdotal when thinking about how talking out loud affects work. I think the study manipulated the way people spoke out loud to themselves to the point that the strategy given might have been a main contributor in doing good on the puzzle and not the actual task of talking. Again, I'd like to reiterate that there is a time and place for thinking aloud because even if it helps one person work more efficiently, the distraction involved will steer other off track.
This article is really interesting. However, I wish the study focused solely on thinking out loud vs. working in silence rather than breaking it down into thinking aloud, silent, if-then, and problem focused since the latter two aren't really the point of the article and only confused me if anything. I personally find thinking out loud to be more helpful for more straightforward tasks, such as counting, to keep myself from getting distracted from things happening around me/people talking. However, when it comes to brainstorming/coming up with an idea for a project or tasks that are more complex, I don't find thinking out loud to be as helpful. For instance, if I'm at a group meeting where everyone's brain storming and thus essentially thinking out loud, I have difficulties with coming up with ideas because I'm using my attention to digest what everyone else is saying. Either way, it's important that people learn how to both think out loud and in silence because regardless of which way is more effective, time and place is ultimately what decides whether you can think out loud or not.
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