When I think about gravity, I visualize a sort of rarification of spacetime – a vacuum of vacuum, in a way. Some of these things can be thought of without using words. A light-year is about 10 petameters, which is kind of an arbitrary yardstick: one thinks of these things in relative terms (the distance to VY Canis Majoris vs the distance to Arcturus, for example). Like, I think about Voyagers crossing the heliopause and visualize the concept of the heliopause in terms of what it is, not so much the words that describe it.
I did an experiment and played some chess. I found that for the most part there wasn’t a verbal monologue going on while I was evaluating the board. I was looking at spatial relations of the pieces and projecting how the board would look when various pieces were moved, as opposed to: “okay my rook is going to have to move there in order to pin his bishop, but if he moved the queen to interpose then I’ll have to move that pawn up…” Occasionally the monologue would start up but usually not while I was deep into projecting spatial images in my mind’s eye.
I read someone (Deaf) recounting the joy of watching his baby’s hands forming their first tiny signs. That’s “language”, but if that guy has an inner monolog, I’m betting it’s either in movement or in vision.
I can switch on the inner monologue for a given purpose: Figuring out what I want to say to someone. It’s like making a rough draft on paper, only in my mind. When I’m done using it that way, I switch it off again. I leave it off most of the time, unless I find a use for it.
Practice of yoga concentration and meditation for many years is what allowed me to switch it off at will.
I also don’t leave a TV on in the background while not watching it. I know some folks do that, but I don’t understand why. An uncontrolled inner monologue is like being in the room with a TV that was left on for no reason. I like the inner quiet.
Now I am intensely interested in finding out how a deaf person with aphantasia thinks.
I don’t always have a literal instruction guide or commentary on my direct actions. I can be singing along with the radio, or thinking about the TV show I saw the day before, or thinking about a conversation I need to have, or whatever. My mind just has to be saying something.
Even if I’m visualizing, my inner voice is saying something.
I had a conversation with my sister about this. She doesn’t have an inner monologue. Her comment was, “It sounds like it’s loud in there.”
I never realized how much and how often I talk out loud to myself until I started forgetting to turn off my chat gpt. I can’t visualize my inner dialogue well enough to know if I think in words or images. I feel like it is both. I do know things will often come to me while I am focusing on something completely unrelated. I don’t know if that relates to this or not.
I find the idea that 30-50% of people completely lack an inner voice or inner speach to be highly suspect. I think it’s probably in the single digits at most. Not sure there have been any studies to actually find out though, but I vaguely remember reading about how uncommon it was.
This study probed the percent of people in New Zealand who have anauralia and/or aphantasia (my emphasis):
Another very intersting paper goes through how lacking inner speach may have associations with lower performance in a verbal working memory task and more difficulty in rhyme judgments based on images.
They also coined a new term for it: anendophasia (an (lack) + endo (inner) + phasia (speech). Cutting edge research!
A 6 minute video with Hank Green describing his lack of an inner monologue:
Is dreaming in color special? Like why would you dream in monochrome — assuming that’s what is contrary — as the world is around them in color? I would assume you’d need a reference, like growing up with black and white entertainment — to normally do so? My father one told me people don’t dream in color, and I polled everyone at the dinner table and they all said they did. I then asked him and he said, well, it’s just something I heard. I think I do.
Are they talking about people actually hearing the voice, though? As I thnk I said upthread, I’ve very definitely got an inner voice; and it’s using words; but it’s silent. And I’ve got little or no “mind’s eye”; until quite recently I thought that was a metaphor. But I have a sense of the words, including some sort of sense of what they would sound like if I spoke them or look like if I wrote them, though I’m not hearing them or seeing them.
– I don’t think I usually dream in color, because I remember an occasional dream when I did and the color really stands out in those cases. But my dreams are more a sense of what’s happening, at least what I remember of them, than a series of visual (or audible) images.
I think it’s actually the opposite, most people dream in color, but some people dream in black + white.
That’s what’s interesting to me. If this is true, why? I can see if you are knee-deep in black-and-white media that you learn to visualize in monochrome. But, assuming normal full color vision, why and how would someone visualize in black and white in their dreams?
Maybe they’re having a dream that they’re a private detective down on their luck, knocking back rotgut whiskey with their feet up on the desk of their fleabag office; when suddenly a sharp-dressed, saucy dame walks in with an interesting proposition.
Heh, I have heard it’s linked to creativity, but I think that’s a nebulous enough concept that I doubt it. But as to why? Dunno, perhaps their ability to visualize only happens in grayscale without great effort. I sometimes dream in cartoons even when I haven’t been consuming them regularly. To me that seems as divorced from reality as dreaming in grayscale.
I definitely dream in color. I remember one very vivid nightmare I had, which in retrospect is weird and doesn’t seem scary at all. It’s not even scary to me now, though I remember being terrified by the dream at the time. I can vividly picture it even now. I’ll say what it was, and yes it is stupid.
So in my dream (or at least this particular sequence of a dream) there was a picture, like a cartoon drawing done in crayon. It was a cartoonish picture of an old time gangster, like Al Capone era. It was very cartoony; think of something like the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. The gangster was done in a pinstripe zoot suit, with a large fedora, and the face was just a shadow under the hat, and all you could see was a pair of sinister eyes. And the outfit (hat, suit, tie, and so on) was in purple and yellow. (Hence why I know it was a color dream.)
What was scary (again, in the dream, it’s not scary to even think about now) was that there was this weird rhythmic beat, like two drum beats then a chorus of voices giving a single wordless long note. And as that chorus sang their “aaaaah” note, it very subtly shifted. Like, “thump-thump-aaaaah” and it would morph slightly during the singing note. Just repeated over and over. And as it shifted, it was becoming more realistic, like if I waited long enough it would eventually come to life and come out of the crayon drawing and do something evil or whatever. I have no idea what it would have been, I just knew in my dream that it was going to happen and there was nothing I could do about it, and I was doomed.
So stupid, yet more than 30 years later I can vividly remember that dream and the colors of that cartoon drawing that somehow was terrifying. I swear that when I woke up from that dream the terror of it lasted for hours. It was the weirdest, dumbest thing.
But yes, absolutely it was in color. I’m sure all my dreams have been in color.
I think there is a conflation of terms.
An inner voice is the talking in your head. If you think in words inside your head, unless you are visualizing the words, you are “hearing” your thoughts.
Inner monologue is when that voice is a constant, ongoing thing. You can’t shut it up.
30% to 50% not having an inner monologue is different than 30% to 50% not having an inner voice.
I don’t understand. What is a “silent” inner voice? The whole part of being a voice is that it’s like a vocal conversation in your head.
I’m not hearing it with my ears, it’s internal, but I’m thinking in “talk”, not print. Not pure images, though I visualize.
This doesn’t apply to me then. It isn’t always talking. Just talking most of the time. Or a large part of the time. And it’s not something I am really in control of; I have thoughts I hear in speech that come to me unbidden. (Not like schizophrenia; the thoughts are me, not someone else.)
I can shut if off if needed. I find meditation to be soothing, and in doing so I shut my brain off to the best of my ability. Sometimes it’s really hard. I used to bowl in a league for years, and I was most successful when I shut off my brain and let my body take over with muscle memory. The trick I’d do for that is to think of a song and play it in my head, and then that would occupy my active brain while I let my body go through the automatic motions of tossing the ball down the lane. They would always play songs in the alley too, but they often weren’t songs I cared for, so I’d have to think about a different one.
But again, I didn’t realize “monologue” meant “always on and never shuts up”. And when I look up the term, that doesn’t seem to be some kind of official or universal definition. Most often it seems to mean some form of internal dialog, but not necessarily an unending one you can’t ever turn off.
Where are you getting the definition from? That would help. I have an equally difficult time believing 30-50% of people have an inner voice that is constant and ongoing.
One with no sound involved. But it is in words. And it’s not really visualized. I can’t explain it any more clearly.
I’m not entirely sure we’re not talking about the same thing, described differently. But I’m not at all sure that we are, either.