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We investigated whether speakers can use an internal channel to monitor their speech for taboo utterances and prevent these from being spoken aloud. Therefore event-related potentials were measured while participants carried out the SLIP task. In this task, speech errors were elicited that could either result in taboo words (taboo-eliciting trials) or neutral words (neutral-eliciting trials). In taboo-eliciting trials, there was an augmented negative wave around 600 ms after the pronunciation cue even though there were no overt errors. This component has previously been interpreted as reflecting conflict. These results indicate that taboo utterances can indeed be detected and corrected internally.

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The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain processes associated with the inhibition of socially undesirable speech. It is tested whether the inhibition of undesirable speech is solely related to brain areas associated with classical stop signal tasks or rather also involves brain areas involved in endogenous self-control. During the experiment, subjects had to do a SLIP task, which was designed to elicit taboo or neutral spoonerisms. Here we show that the internal inhibition of taboo words activates the right inferior frontal gyrus, an area that has previously been associated with externally triggered inhibition. This finding strongly suggests that external social rules become internalized and act as a stop-signal.

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