Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2008 - Volume 31, Issue 03  

Open Peer Commentary

Private speech, cognitive-computational control, and the autism-psychosis continuum

William Frawleya1

a1 Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC 20016. bfrawley@cal.org

Abstract

Autism and psychosis manifest private speech disruptions analogous to their diametrical opposition along the autism-psychosis continuum. Autism has naturally suppressed private speech with predictable structural deficits when it does surface; psychosis has overt but ineffectual private speech with similar structural deficits. These private speech oppositions are best understood in the context of the control processes of cognitive-computational architectures.