The Role of
Innerspeech in Accidents
Innervoice
is the subjective experience of hearing sounds in the absence of external and
overt sounds. We hear sounds and voices
in our head normally. For example, we
may sometimes hear asif the door bell has rung.
We may also hear asif we are speaking when we are thinking.
“Inner
speech can be defined as the subjective experience of
language in the absence of overt and audible articulation.” [1] The loudness of the innerspeech changes from
time to time. For example, when we face
injustice our innervoice begins to ‘shout’ literally.
There are
times our innervoice may get out of control and disturb us. The innervoice may get totally out of control
and we may not be able to control it.
This may lead to hallucinations.
Sound hallucinations are frequent in some mental disorders.
Innervoice
also plays a positive function in a healthy person. Simply, we repeat a phrase when we have to
keep it in our mind. “Innerspeech’s relations to task difficulty and task
performance (Al-Namlah, Fernyhough, & Meins, 2006; Fernyhough &
Fradley, 2005; Winsler, Fernyhough, & Montero, 2009)”[1], “cognitive capacities responsible for the planning,
inhibition, and control of behavior (e.g., Cragg & Nation, 2010”;[1]
“Williams, Bowler, & Jarrold, 2012),
an important role in metacognition,
self-awareness, and selfunderstanding (Morin, 2005)”[1].
We begin to
hear innerspeech intentionally or automatically, namely consciously or
subconsciously.
Innerspeech
is trigged when we adress an issue or a person by our will. Our subconscious may trigger innerspeech in
case of emergency, or task difficulty or just a habit.
We percieve
innervoice as our self voice or non-selfvoice.
Selfvoice implies selfconsciousness and focus in cognitive
processing. Focus obtained by
innerspeech inhibits other cognitive tasks in a recursive and increasing
manner.
The large
system driving person has to stand on the control of his/her vehicle for long
periods of time. Repetitive visual/audial
inputs, static view or situations bores the driver. When the motivation(Dopamin) becomes
excessive according to the task the brain has to use it for another task, if
none then dreaming begins. Dreaming may
be visual or audial or as innerspeech.
The driver begins to think about a specific subject loudly in his/her
mind.
When
dreaming or the innerspeech begins, it is at first treated as ‘divided
attention’, namely the driver drives and also talks to himself in his mind. The risk is, the focus of innerspeech has the
natural tendency to increase. The driver
cannot know when the innerspeech has overcome the driving task. The worst of it, we cannot be aware of the
closure of the secondary task. For ex.
you cannot notice when the radio’s sound has disappeared ina case of driving
difficulty. This is the reason we
suddenly get aware of an imminent danger when driving.
Technically
speaking, not related innerspeech while driving increases the selfconsciousness
/ selfawareness of the driver. This
hurts the man-machine embodiment, let’s name it, pilot-airplane embodiment. The loss of embodiment leads to the
destruction of the situation awareness.
At this
point, the safety of the large system is left only to the subconscious and the
sudden reflexive reactions of the driver.
The subconscious, may be triggered by driver’s previously trained visual
rules and even if the driver looks and does not see the outer world his subconscious
may sense the emergency.
