Private speech is a cognitive tool to guide thinking and behavior, yet its regulatory use in atypical development remains equivocal. This study investigated the influence of task difficulty on private speech in preschool children with attention or language difficulties. Measures of private speech use, form and content were obtained while 52 typically developing and 25 developmentally at-risk three- to four-year-old children completed Duplo construction and card sort tasks, each comprising two levels of challenge. In line with previous research, developmentally at-risk children used less internalized private speech than typically developing peers. However, both typically developing and at-risk children demonstrated a similar regulatory private speech response to difficulty with no systematic evidence of group difference. This was captured by an increase in all utterances, reduced private speech internalization, and more frequent forethought and self-reflective content. Results support the hypothesis of delayed private speech internalization but not regulatory deviance in atypical development.

私人演讲是一种指导思维和行为的认知工具，但其在非典型发展中的监管用途仍然模棱两可。本研究调查了任务难度对注意力或语言困难的学龄前儿童私人言语的影响。在 52 名发育正常的 3 至 4 岁儿童和 25 名发育有风险的 3 至 4 岁儿童完成 Duplo 构建和卡片分类任务时，获得了私语使用、形式和内容的测量值，每个任务包括两个级别的挑战。与之前的研究一致，与发育正常的同龄人相比，发育有风险的儿童使用较少的内化私人言语。然而，正常发育和处于危险中的儿童都表现出对困难的类似调节性私人言语反应，没有系统的群体差异证据。这是通过所有话语的增加、私人言语内化的减少以及更频繁的预先思考和自我反省内容来捕捉的。结果支持私人言语内化延迟的假设，但不支持非典型发展中的监管偏差。