Sinem Vatanartiran

President, Bay Atlantic University
"Concordia Per Eruditionem / Peace Through Education"

[BUEK MİM @buek_mim]

“Gelecek Sensin” temasıyla gerçekleştirilen Bahçeşehir Koleji yıl sonu gösterisinde 700 öğrencinin Volkswagen Arena sahnesinde sergilediği gösteriye ilişkin haber Show TV ekranlarında yer aldı.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Russian psychologist spent 10 years proving that the act of talking to yourself out loud is one of the most powerful cognitive tools the human brain has, and almost nobody outside his field has read the work.

His name was Lev Vygotsky.

He worked in Moscow in the 1920s and died of tuberculosis in 1934 at the age of 37. He had no laboratory, no funding, almost no English readers, and a body of work that the Soviet government suppressed for two decades after he died.

He produced the foundational theory of how human cognition actually develops, and the central piece of that theory was a behavior almost every adult is faintly embarrassed about.

Vygotsky noticed that young children talk to themselves constantly. They narrate their own actions, they argue with imaginary opponents, they instruct themselves through tasks out loud.

The dominant theory at the time, from the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, said this was a sign of cognitive immaturity that children would eventually grow out of as they learned to think properly.

Vygotsky said the exact opposite.

He argued that this self-directed speech was the most important cognitive event in the entire developmental window, because it was the moment a child first started to use language as a tool to control their own mind. The child was not failing to think. The child was learning how to think by externalizing the process and listening to themselves do it.

He predicted that as children matured, this out-loud self-talk would not disappear. It would go underground. It would become silent inner speech, which is the running monologue every adult has inside their own head for the rest of their life.

The voice you hear when you read this sentence is the direct descendant of a four-year-old narrating their own block tower.

For 50 years almost nobody outside Russia had access to his work, and the few researchers who did pick it up could not get funding to test it. Then in the early 2000s the experiments finally started to pile up, and what they found was that Vygotsky had been right about something even more important than he knew.

The first major study came from Gary Lupyan at the University of Wisconsin and Daniel Swingley at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012. They ran a simple visual search experiment. Participants were shown 20 images at once and asked to find a specific object, like a banana or a chair. In one condition they searched silently. In the other condition they were told to say the name of the object out loud to themselves while looking for it.

The participants who spoke the target name out loud found the object significantly faster, with higher accuracy, than the participants who searched in silence. The effect was strongest when the spoken word matched a familiar object the brain already had a strong category for.

Saying the word out loud literally tuned the visual system to detect that thing better. The researchers called it the label feedback effect, and the implication was that the act of vocalizing a goal physically changes how the brain processes the world while pursuing it.

The second major study came out of the University of Michigan and Michigan State in 2017. The lead researchers were Ethan Kross and Jason Moser, and they used both EEG and fMRI to record what happens inside the brain when people talk to themselves while emotionally upset.

They asked participants to recall painful autobiographical memories and reflect on them in two different ways. Some used the first person, saying things like "why am I feeling this way." Others used the third person, referring to themselves by their own name, saying things like "why is John feeling this way."

The brain scans showed that the simple act of switching from first person to third person, even silently, decreased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for rumination and self-referential pain. Within a single second of using their own name instead of the word I, participants showed measurably lower emotional reactivity. The shift required no extra cognitive effort. It cost the brain nothing. And it worked.

Kross described the mechanism in his interviews. Talking to yourself by name creates a small amount of psychological distance from your own experience. Your brain processes the situation more like a problem belonging to someone else, which means it can analyze it instead of drowning in it.

What Vygotsky had intuited in 1934 turned out to be even more powerful than the developmental theory he built it into. The voice you use to talk to yourself is not background noise. It is one of the most precise cognitive tools the brain has, and you can change how it works just by changing the pronoun you use.

People who talk through problems out loud are not anxious or unstable. They are running an externalized version of a process the rest of us are running silently and worse. The kindergartener narrating their block tower, the surgeon muttering through a procedure, the engineer pacing a hallway describing a bug to nobody, the athlete repeating a cue to themselves before a free throw, they are all using the same ancient mechanism that builds and steers human thought.

You can run the experiment yourself the next time you are stuck on something hard. Stop trying to solve it silently in your head. Say it out loud. Describe what you are seeing. Walk yourself through the steps as if you were explaining it to a colleague who is not in the room.

And when something genuinely upsets you, switch to your own name. Ask why this person is feeling this way, instead of why I am feeling this way.

The voice you have been told to keep quiet your entire life is one of the oldest pieces of cognitive technology you own.

Most people are still embarrassed to use it.

[Bay Atlantic University @bauintdc]

Professional highlights from our 2026 Commencement Ceremony 🎓
A lasting reflection of a remarkable day #baudc #classof2026

[Bay Atlantic University @bauintdc]

Class of 2026, today is your moment. 🎓

Dream boldly, take risks, and trust your path—your BAU journey will guide what’s next.

Watch the full message from President Dr. Sinem.

#BAUdc #daretodream #ClassOf2026

[Sinem Vatanartiran @sinemisv]

An exciting day for us 🎊🎊

[Bay Atlantic University @bauintdc]

Class of 2026, today is your moment. 🎓

Dream boldly, take risks, and trust your path—your BAU journey will guide what’s next.

Watch the full message from President Dr. Sinem.

#BAUdc #daretodream #ClassOf2026

[Sinem Vatanartiran @sinemisv]

@OmerBoz_BK 🎊

[Sinem Vatanartiran @sinemisv]

@forzacimbom 😢

[Bay Atlantic University @bauintdc]

Ready for graduation?
 Dr. Sean Cox shares a quick guide to wearing your cap and gown the right way—so you can step on stage with confidence.
From student to graduate—welcome to the BAU alumni community. #baudc #daretodream #classof2026

[Global Policy Institute @GPInstitute]

GPI’s latest article is out: “The Asset Price Distortion Bubble” by Martin Hutchinson.

Click to read: https://t.co/6R6hP9fbkG

#GlobalPolicy #Economy #Finance #AssetBubble #Investment #PrivateEquity #AI #EconomicOutlook #PolicyAnalysis

[Bay Atlantic University @bauintdc]

12 years of growth, innovation, and community.
From a vision in 2014 to a global community today, BAU continues to be shaped by the students, faculty, and staff who make it what it is.
Here’s to the journey and everything still ahead.
Happy 12th Birthday, BAU! #baudc

[BAU Global @bauglobal]

Shape the future of tech with diverse-scale solutions in a thriving global market.
https://t.co/8riKhOSv7f

[Kafkas Dernekleri Federasyonu @KAFFED]

ÇERKES BAYRAĞI GÜNÜ
Adıgey Cumhuriyeti Adıge Xase'nin 2010 yılında ilan ettiği 25 Nisan Çerkes Bayrağı Gününü, birliğimizin ve beraberliğimizin sembolü olan bayrağımızın sonsuza kadar varolacağı inancıyla kutluyoruz.
Адыгэ ныпым и мафэм пае тышъуфэгуш1о!
Адыгэ ныпым и махуэм дохъуэхъу!
Kafkas Dernekleri Federasyonu

[BAU Global @bauglobal]

A World University in the Heart of Istanbul!
https://t.co/ewExpMHN9t

[BAU Global @bauglobal]

Build the skills you need to navigate today’s complex business environment with Bay Atlantic University’s Bachelor’s Program in Business Administration & Management.  
https://t.co/8riKhOSv7f

[Firuze @FiruzeUzun]

We took our place as Bay Atlantic University at the International Education Fair held at Bahçeşehir Kemerburgaz Campus, organized with the support of GEC (Global Education Center). @bauintdc

We had the opportunity to connect with many students and share information about our programs and international education opportunities. The event was productive, and there was a good level of interest in our booth.🐬🐬

Bahçeşehir Koleji Kemerburgaz Kampüsümüzde, GEC (Global Education Center) iş birliğiyle düzenlenen International Education Fair’da Bay Atlantic University olarak yerimizi aldık!

Uluslararası eğitim fırsatlarını paylaşmak ve öğrencilerle bir araya gelmek bizim için büyük bir mutluluktu. Standımıza ilgi gösteren herkese teşekkür ederiz! 🐬🐬

[Sports Digitale @SportsDigitale]

🇹🇷 Biz bu ruhu tanıyoruz.

[Houston Rockets @HoustonRockets]

One of a kind 🗣️

Alperen Sengun is the FIRST player in @NBA history to record:

📊 35+ PTS | 10+ REB | 5+ AST | 3 + STL | 3+ BLK | 5+ 3PM

IN. A. GAME.

@Toyota | @statmuse

[Firuze @FiruzeUzun]

Dear BAU’er,

Study Abroad in Washington D.C. 2026-2027 Academic Year Fall & Spring Additional Quota Applications have started! @bauintdc @Bahcesehir

📌 Application Deadline: April 20, 2026
🔗 Apply here: https://t.co/RtYpG4tp5u
💌More info: [email protected]

[Sporx Basketbol @sporx_basket]

Alperen Şengün: "Kendimi harika hissettim. Buraya oynamaya, maçı kazanmaya ve eve mutlu biçimde gitmek için gelmiştim. Tek yapmaya çalıştığım şey kazanmak."