AUTHOR=O’Connor Sean 

TITLE=The Natural Selection of Private and Inner Speech

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00163

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00163

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>This article analyzes the emergence of private and inner speech from the perspective of natural selection, arguing that social speech acts as a selection pressure for the emergence of private speech, that private speech acts as a selection pressure that leads to the emergence of inner speech, and that this view of private and inner speech may help to explain the natural selection of a variety of other traits of the human mind in an asymmetric intraspecific evolutionary arms race.</p>