Bidirectional Naming, Problem Solving, and the Development of Verbal Relations

We often solve problems by engaging in mediating strategies such as talking to ourselves. In order to accurately use and respond to these strategies, we must “understand” or react appropriately to the products of our own verbal behavior. The term bidirectional naming (BiN) has been used to describe the integration of both listener and speaker behaviors that leads to speaking with understanding. In this talk, I will describe a series of studies showing that in the absence of either speaker or listener behaviors, participants often fail to solve problems in the form of matching-to-sample and categorization tasks. It is proposed that to solve these tasks participants must either react to their own speaker behavior (i.e., BiN) or engage in covert imagining.