Verbal Self-Monitoring

Serial action involves planning, and planning can be controlled or monitored. For instance, when we reach for a cup, we can adapt the trajectory of our reaching movement in case there is an obstacle, like a milk bottle. Similarly, speakers can monitor their own speech. Speech monitoring is usually viewed as intimately related to ongoing speech planning: Speakers monitor what they will say and what they have just said. Moreover, in order to hold a conversation, tell a story, or give a talk, speakers must keep records of their utterances over seconds or minutes. This suggests cross talk between the production and the comprehension system. In this chapter, I focus on one of the levels of representation that is involved in this cross talk.