When i read or write my inner voice says the words in my head. Why.
I don’t know if science has unraveled exactly why our brains do that, but what you are experiencing is normal. In fact, if you don’t have your inner voice saying the words when you read them, there’s a good chance that you are dyslexic.
It’s also interesting to note that your larynx muscles are experiencing tiny movement while your inner voice is “speaking”. The reason for this is that some of the same parts of the brain activate for both your inner voice and your actual spoken voice.
You probably first learned to read by reading aloud. (And in fact, as I understand it, if you go far enough back in history, reading aloud used to be the standard way to read.) So you got used to hearing your actual voice as you read.
You may also be better at processing information aurally, and hearing your inner voice while you read helps you do that—but I’m not speaking out of any expert knowledge here.
This old thread provides evidence that some people hear an inner voice when they read and some people don’t (and some do sometimes).
Poking around a bit on google, I found that this is called subvocalization, and as usual, wikipedia has an article about it.
I can consciously stop doing this. It increases my reading speed, but significantly decreases comprehension. I need to hear the words in my mind in order to retain their meaning.
But listening to an audiobook doesn’t do it for me; I need to hear my own inner voice.
Whose voice would you like to hear instead?
Sometimes that happens with me. Something to try, in order to get some guys I know to try reading I suggested they read Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. I knew they had all seen the movie and I recall when I read the book after seeing the movie I could hear Morgan Freeman’s voice in my head as I read. The movie narration is very close to the text, and the guys who gave it a try found the same thing. Usually though, I don’t have anyone else’s voice to substitute as I read. It’s mostly narration and dialogue where it matters, otherwise there’s no voice in things like descriptive writing.
When I read something written by someone whose voice is familiar to me (say, JFK or Howard Cosell), I hear his voice in my head.
I timed myself reading post #7 above twice, first normally, then reading aloud.
Reading normally, it took about 15 seconds.
Reading aloud fairly quickly, it took about 30 seconds.
I don’t hear any voice in my head when reading normally. How long does it take those of you who hear a voice in their head to read post #7 the way you normally read?
I confess I don’t really know what “hearing your voice in your head” actually means.
I see the words ,I know what they mean, I don’t know how a “voice” comes into it
That’s because your bicameral mind has broken down. 
I can’t remember the technical term but there’s a method of training yourself out of the habit. One method I vaguely remember involved reading text that scrolls at an increasing speed. But your inner voice might just talk faster.
18 seconds, versus 32 seconds aloud.
Although I certainly perceive myself as hearing the words in my head while I’m reading silently, I think that in fact I’m skipping over or overlapping the common ones - as, and , at, to … etc etc. Also, you don’t have to breathe.
I suspect what may be happening with those who don’t hear a voice while reading, is that perhaps you dont have very strong audio imagination (previous thread) in the same way that some of us don’t visualise much
This is not very helpful as to content or cites, but there is a long history of studies of deaf people and their reading, learning, and cognition without such an “inner voice.”
David Brin is a favorite of mine. He writes science fiction and has created alien races with names like Brma, F’ruthian, G’Kek, Gl’kahesh, J’8lek, Karrank%, Le’4-2vo, Mrgh’4luargi, N’8ght, T’4Lek, Vriiilh, and Zyu8. Now if I was subvocalizing what I was reading, I’d hit every one of these names like a wall. But I don’t; I just read a name like J’8lek and log it in my mind as a written word not a spoken one. I don’t pause to think about how it’s pronounced unless a character in the narrative brings up the issue.
6 seconds the way I normally read, 31 seconds reading aloud.
When I was a teenager I tried to read the Silmarillion several times, but I always ran into the names like a brick wall. If I could not pronounce the name I would get stuck on it every time. I finally finished the book several years later. What I ended up doing was replacing the names with English names in my head. I would get to one of Tolkein’s names, like Manwe, and replace it with Matt, every time. That was the only way i could finish that book.
James Earl Jones would be good.
This is one of those things that for me is like when you are sitting in a room and your brain has been filtering a sound such as a running air conditioner or something out and suddenly you become aware of it and it is distracting for a little while and takes a minute for the sound to be filtered back out. I don’t hear my voice in my head when I read but then I’ll become aware that I am hearing my voice in my head and then it distracts me from the text that I am reading and I’m not absorbing just repeating the words in my mind, and then my inner voice will be filtered back out of conscious awareness and I start actually comprehending and absorbing what I am reading again.
I don’t think that’s the case for me, I can replay songs in my head pretty well or conjour up sound effects but whatever it is that turns the written word into meaning is not my voice.
Although, I realise that as I type this out that I am hearing my own voice. Strange. Possibly a speed thing? I type much much slower than I read so maybe that allows for my natural speaking voice to be substituted. When reading normally I’d go far faster than I’d ever speak so maybe my brain gives up and discards the pretence of my voice because it would internally sound so false.
I don’t know.
Brains is weird.