This is me.
Dear me, I have all kinds of inner voices. It was even worse when I was writing novels, when my characters, whom I never had a great deal of control over, would take over with their own inner monologues. I have conversations with my voices (some of the voices are recognizably me, the one who asks plaintive unanswerable questions, and also the one who says firmly, ‘remember to rinse with that nasty mouthwash the dentist recommended’. Some of the voices (like my novel characters) are definitely not me. Some are apparently well-known saints. But then, I never lost the common childhood experience that the entire world is sentient and has things to say if we listen. I do not mean this poetically. So why not my own mind? I contain multitudes.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that most people don’t live like this.
As for thinking in pictures or words? It’s more like video. And when I read, I don’t hear words, it is more as if I am walking about inside the book. I think this is partly because I usually don’t read single words, I tend to read whole paragraphs as a single gestalt. I can read much more rapidly than most people, I believe.
When I read I hear every single word in my head. I think some spead-reading courses claim I could learn to not have to do so. That has made me wonder whether people who have no or less pronounced inner monologue are on average faster readers compared to people like me that cannot avoid having to “sound” every freaking word when reading.
(I have also just realized that I might be more destracted by words that I don’t know or am unsure of how to prounce than others. Could be related.)
During the exceedingly rare times when I have been very engrossed in what I’m reading, the intensity of my inner voice maybe goes down, even almost completely diminishing? It could be that it’s still there but I simply stop noticing it (as much).
I can also potentially quiet my inner voice when doing things like talking, meditation, sports or something else that requires a certain amount of focus/attention and/or exertion or that produces a strong enough physical/emotional sensation.
Even when not doing those things, my inner voice is not a constant 100% on all of the time thing. Still fairly frequent I guess.
P.S. Some possible terminology:
-Anendophasia: lack of an inner voice
-Anauralia: lack of inner sound
-Aphantasia: lack of inner imagery
(I can have vivid inner sound and pretty clear inner voice but my ability to visualize in my head is definitely the worst of the three.)
I have a mix: I hear an inner voice when reading, but most of the time when thinking, there is no voice.
Incidentally, I don’t read much fiction these days, because I am very bad at it; in the senses that:
- I read comparatively slowly, because there’s a voice
- I can’t visualize things very well. Typically there’s just a single image lingering in my mind for a while, and if the text then throws a curveball like “…all this was next to a flowing river” or whatever, then my brain just gives up and doesn’t want to make a new image.
When I read, it seems like I am vocalizing the words in my head – initially, at least. At some point, especially in a good novel, the vocalization part seems to diffuse into a sort of visualization/imagination of what is being described.
Some people say that they can visualize things to the extent that it is like the whatever is right before their eyes. When I visualize, it is more abstract, like an unrendered CAD model, or the difference of map view as opposed to satellite view.
Somewhere I saw an exploration of how people describe things and events. Whether and when the words for visual, aural or tactile/emotional (feeling) words are used to connect to the object of description. It is not clear to me to what extent this reveals about how a given mind operates.
Really hard to figure this out for myself. Obviously, when I’m reading or typing, I’m hearing the words as if they’re being read to me, though I don’t think it’s my voice speaking. I live alone and drive alone a lot, so I’ll confess I sometimes monologue to myself. As well, one thing I do as a result of my ASD is that I rehearse conversations before I have them, sometimes out loud but often mentally, and I hear it then.
Visualization is tougher. Images often blink in my head: I can’t envision someplace I’ve been to, or something like a shot composition I want to get in a photoshoot (sideline hobby), and have the image actually sustain in my mind’s eye.
I have a cousin with synesthesia…probably something similar at work there.
I often say, quoting Mike Myers, that my mother has no internal monologue. As in, everything that crosses her mind, she feels compelled to say out loud. It’s kind of become white noise in the background, TBH.
Yeah, inner first person monologue here.
At first I was thinking people had a literal third person inner voice and was thinking that was extremely unnerving.
But when I read I mostly do it in images; it’s a mental movie so to speak. Definitely not an internal audiobook.
And I tend to visualize dates as a sort of timeline/horizon in my head, where lost things are in clear detail and things that are further out are more murky.
That’s a clever way to find them!
Mine just becomes what I’m reading. (Or writing, as the case may be.) It’s a continuous stream of words; the source may be exterior or interior.
I think I’m a pretty fast reader, though no record-setter. I certainly read faster than I can talk; but, again, my interior monologue doesn’t include sounding out all the words; and I’m certainly not visualising them all, let alone visualising an image they might translate into – that I can’t do. It’s difficult to explain how I am perceiving the words in my head, except that it’s as individual words, but soundless and invisible.
– OK,. when I think about it hard, I am sort of pronouncing the words; but it’s going much faster than I could physically pronounce them and there’s no sense of actual sound involved, and it works also for words I can’t pronounce.
Of course, we can’t forget the little oompah band.
(sorry…deep cut for the Kids in the Hall fans here…)
This reminded me of something. I am a fast reader, but I have had friends who were slow readers, and didn’t read very often because they struggled with that as a child, dyslexia etc, and the result was that when they did read they understood the scenes in a much more visually epic way than I did. Somehow they experienced the whole story on a much more intense level that I didn’t perceive at all. I skimmed the story in a rush, while they absorbed it.
If they don’t have an inner monologue and are much more visual oriented as they read, that would finally make some sense.
Do those that don’t have an inner voice get ear worms? Meaning hearing a song over and over in their head.
I definitely have an inner voice. Often hard to turn off. Can keep me awake.
I almost never get ear worms.
I don’t either. It’s not that kind of inner voice.
I not only have an inner voice, but when I’m alone me and that voice talk right aloud to each other.
But can you think of music? And when you do, is it perfectly like the real song (it is in my case)?
Not quite sure what you mean? I know the words to thousands of songs. I can read music, but would not be able to quickly transcribe it just on hearing a tune. I could probably mostly do it slowly. That what you mean - thinking in music?
I do have an inner voice. I mentioned it to a doctor once and he took it to mean that I was hearing voices.
I also have Aphantasia, and I can grimace musically.
Aaah… a typo and autocorrect bit me! It was supposed to say close things!
So if the sentence says “He looked a lot like Ned Flanders, except younger and black.”, you’re not visualizing how that person looks? I mean, I read the words, but I also visualize what a young, black Ned Flanders might look like in real life.