Inner speech and the body error theory.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2024 Ronald P Endicott 3 citations
Inner speech, the experience of a voice inside the mind, may arise from a cross-modal illusion. The Body Error Theory (BET) proposes that subtle, confirmed activities in the speech musculature during inner speech combine with ordinary quiet nonverbal sounds—such as breathing or background noise—to create a mistaken perception of speech sounds. This illusion explains the 'voice within the mind' without requiring a suppressed copy of overt speech. The theory integrates with standard speech-monitoring accounts, accommodates insights from leading theories, and is supported by experience-sampling data. BET offers a testable alternative to existing explanations.