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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#101

Post by ghoul2 »

I actually didn't used to have this "internal monologue". Until a couple years ago - when it just sorta showed up. And at some point I became consciously aware of it - and its ...power, I guess. Without the inner monologue it had been impossible for me to have "insincere" conversations. Using that word for the lack for a better one - I mean where I am talking to someone and consciously controlling what I say instead of just freely saying whatever - now the monologue can sort of "front run" the conversation and help me control what I say. I had never under stood earlier how people managed to pull that off...and when the monologue showed up it was an "enlightenment under the bodhi tree" level event.

From the other comments:

1. I hated audio books before the monologue, and I still do after.

2. (from @echelon's post) I was quite imaginative before the monologue - but more in a sort of a fuzzy, visual way. I had entire fantasy realms just "visible" inside my head. After the monologue showed up, my imagination is more like @echelon describes - I can talk to/against myself, go off on variants of movies etc. I am not entirely sure, but I _think_ my visual imagination has gotten weaker though, and I find it harder to enjoy fantasy now. Could be just age though.

3. Can't seem to be able to turn it off, or control it entirely. The monologue is my worst critic - not a bad way, but it'd be nice for it to not _be_ there all the time.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#102

Post by FooHentai »

LukeBMM wrote: post #31

A similar subjective experience just came up recently[1] on HN as an aside in an article posted about Derek Parfitt: > He attributes [his severely deficient autobiographical memory] to his inability to form mental images. Although he recognizes familiar things when he sees them, he cannot call up images of them afterward in his head: he cannot visualize even so simple an image as a flag; he cannot, when he is away, r…

I think it's more common for people with this to cope by thinking in terms of abstractions, rather than the other way around.

The flag's a great example. Can't call up an image of a flag, but I can hold a kind of inferred 'essense' of a flag based on the abstract idea. Rectangle, some dividing lines depending on the country, kinda a wavy shader effect on the edges, probably a pole off to one side holding it up. But that's as rich as the image gets.

If internal monologue is supposed to be an actual voice that you perceive vividly then yeah, that's not present either.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#103

Post by foogazi »

mhandley wrote: post #75

I think there are also two types of people when it comes to navigating. One type gives and understands directions along the lines of "go along this street until you pass the Red Lion pub, then turn right. After 50 metres, turn left". Most people seem to be in this category. Then there are those of us who have an internal map, and have no problem with "go north for half a mile, then turn east". I'm the latter - I alwa…

> No matter where I am, indoors or out, I can pretty much always point north.

That’s a very specific claim and it’s something that I’ve felt to the point that I’ll test myself when indoors

Another part of the driving is that I’ll often ‘skip’ over the boring middle parts, reach my destination and not remember the series of decisions I made to get there.

I often listen to books or podcasts when driving and when driving over the same area I’ll remember what part of the book I listened to at that particular spot

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#104

Post by rconti »

vekker wrote: post #52

What does the author mean with "hearing his voice" though? People can have different interpretations of what it means to "hear". In what sense can it be compared with hearing actual sounds? Does it have the same quality. Does he perceive his mental dialogue like an overlay on top of "external" sound? I've been wondering the same thing when people say they "see" or "visualize" something: do they actually, visually see…

Yeah, I'm a bit perplexed on this. I sometimes have conversations in my head, or imagine a conversation with someone else I might run into. But by the same token, there's no "voice" to the conversation; it doesn't "sound like" anyone; sometimes i think through something before saying it, other times i just say things without saying it in my head first.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#105

Post by 40acres »

Unfathomable to me. My mind is constantly racing, playing out different conversations, interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things (one day I'm the president of the US talking about foreign policy, another day I'm a big tech CEO navigating the diversity questions). I constantly have something in my ears to tune myself out, podcasts or music. After being diagnosed w/ ADHD I realize I'm probably on the extreme end of those with internal dialogue but to see a complete lack of it in others is very surprising.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#106

Post by empath75 »

echelon wrote: post #65

I dream up movies and songs and all sorts of rich fantasies in my head, and I do this constantly. As a consequence of this, I never get bored as I've got an incredible imagination to lean on. I think about movies I want to make, startups I want to create, the change I want to put into the world. New songs on my commute, goals I want to accomplish, what I could do with time travel. I'm always working on the structures…

I do this all the time, too. I always have like 3 or 4 movies or books going on in my head that I'm working on.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#107

Post by donatj »

For myself personally, it depends on what I'm thinking about. Thinking about writing this sentence, I hear each of the words I'm going to type in my head before I type them.

However, if I'm working out how to assemble a table, I'm not hearing "And now I screw the leg on" I just abstractly know that's what I'm going to do.

I have to imagine that's the case for at least most people. Thinking out complicated abstract concepts in internally verbalized words just seems like it would take forever.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#108

Post by jerf »

jryb wrote: post #80

I was always very confused as a child when characters on TV couldn't tell whether they were dreaming. I thought it was obvious! Things were 3-dimensional and they could taste and feel and hear and see, which no one does in dreams. While reading a great discussion similar to the link[1], a comment made me realize people actually do have realistic dreams that are comparable to waking life, which absolutely floored me.…

It's probably less of a difference than you might think. Dreams are generally less detailed than you might think from their portrayal on TV. What they are really good at are convincing the dreamers that they are a great deal more detailed than they really are, because they're on the "inside" of the cognition; you might "see" a vaguely round blotch of color like what you may see when you close your eyes, but you cognitively "know" it's a ball or a face or the vanguard of the invading alien fleet that have been sent to Earth to determine whether or not your family shall live or die based on whether or not they brush their teeth for a prime number of seconds or something. People can't tell they're dreaming not because the dreams are amazing 8K HD accurate displays with surround sound, but because the critical faculties needed to know if you're dreaming are just off.

(I've been keeping my eye on those efforts to reverse visualize dreams via neural scanning. I have a pet theory that they're already nearly at the maximum resolution they'll ever have, because in reality there isn't that much visual data in the dream. I suspect the vast bulk takes place higher in the cognitive stack.)

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#109

Post by empath75 »

baddox wrote: post #28

I saw this viral tweet and I hoped that was more scientific information to read, because I'm a little confused. I don't see enough information here to even determine which type of person I am. Of course I've always heard of "internal monologue" and of course I think about things using language. But I also don't "hear" anything, and definitely not something that literally sounds like my voice speaking. But if I were t…

I would not say that my internal monologue is entirely auditory, but there's an auditory element to it. I sometimes sort of 'see' the words or concept I'm thinking about, and if i focus on it, I think I can switch from one to the other.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#110

Post by _bxg1 »

Something I've done most of my life is to actively pre-imagine the way I would phrase different concepts to people with different backgrounds, before even having a context in which to use those wordings. Like as soon as a nonverbal concept enters my mind I start trying out an explanation, testing it against a hypothetical person, seeing how the words "sound" together and guessing at what misunderstandings they might have and adjusting and refining it until I feel like it would come across clearly, and then I just tuck those words away in the back of my head in case I end up needing them.
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