Cardigan:
This is how my wife and I read as well and it’s where bad writing can seriously affect enjoyment of reading.
Our son has/had challenges with reading. At one point he said ‘when I read I just see words on a page. I don’t picture anything in my head.’ This struck me as odd at the time, as I confess it never occurred to me that someone could ever experience reading any other way than the way I do.
Yes, some readers see “mental movies” or images of what they read; others don’t. I know this has been discussed before, and I thought we’d had at least one thread specifically devoted to it, but the closest thing I’ve been able to find is this:
Take this with a grain of salt, because there’s no way I’ll be able to find the cite, but this OP made me think of an article I read years ago on this very topic. As I recall, there were studies done that categorized readers into two camps with regard to how they processed what they read. One group mentally transformed what they read into images in their head. These readers were truly immersed in their reading. If they read an adventure story they could picture Sherlock Holmes (or whoever) a…