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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#621

Post by CivBase »

bradlys wrote: post #253

For those who do inner monologue - I worry about telling you about this. It might make you wish you didn't ever realize it. So.. spoiler in the next sentence. When you start talking in your head, pay attention to your vocal cords and the area around them... Notice anything? They're probably moving like they would if you were actually talking out loud. Have you ever noticed how you tried to talk really fast in your he…

I often recite rants in my head like that, but I definitely don't do it for everything. I figure my body is responding to things I am more emotionally charged about by preparing to speak. Sometimes I even do start speaking quietly to myself if I'm especially worked up - but I also generally take that as a que that I need to focus on relaxing.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#622

Post by jdbernard »

etrk wrote: post #569
fouc wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to read without sounding out the words in your head. Then since you're not thinking in speech when reading, you have room to listen.

I’d heard that this is, to some extent, impossible, because everybody subvocalizes when they read. Wikipedia supports this, but I guess the goal is to minimize subvocalization rather than to eliminate it completely? “Micro-muscle tests suggest that full and permanent elimination of subvocalizing is impossible.” I know this is true for me. If I press the tongue to the roof of my mouth while reading, I can’t stop the m…

Sometimes I wonder how many things we've "proven" because our studies aren't large enough to observe all the edge cases. I sometimes wish I could contact the researchers and volunteer myself as a counter-example.

I haven't hooked myself up to electrodes and measured nerve response, but as far as I can tell I don't subvocalise when I read. I can also turn off my internal monologue; I don't have to hear the words in my head as I read them though I typically do.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#623

Post by nprateem »

WillDaSilva wrote: post #582
nibbula wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not only healthy, but a great ability to be respected and cultivated. It is also good to learn to not do this. Saying it's unhealthy is like saying /dev/random is unhealty, but /dev/null is, or stars are bad but empty space is good. Both are quite useful. (let's please not have that talk about cryptographic qualities of /dev/random). My experience is that if you can easily tap into endless creativity and also e…

Your comment has helped assuage some fears of mine regarding meditation. I've been meditating most days for the past month now, and plan to continue to do so, but just within the past few days I've realized that I no longer effortlessly see amazing colours and shapes whenever I close my eyes. I'm worried that meditation is diminishing that creative aspect of my mind that produces such vivid imagery automatically. Ide…

> see amazing colours and shapes whenever I close my eyes

Are they fractal shapes, or like you'd see in a kalaidoscope perchance?

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#624

Post by jdbernard »

henrikschroder wrote: post #488
WJW wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to comment that I don't seem to be able to do internal Darth Vader voice. No idea why.

Can you do anyone else's voice? Friends? Family? SO? Can you remember someone saying something they said, in their voice? Start with the memory, and then tack on the new sentence at the end of it. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Now you read the rest of this sentence in Darth Vader's voice.

Not the parent, but for me I have to actively remember what the target voice sounds like and consciously alter my internal monologue to match. As soon as I relax this acting process my internal monologue slips back into my neutral voice. So those, "you're now reading this in X's voice," never really do anything for me.

Maybe related, I don't always experience my thoughts via an internal monologue. Maybe roughly 70% of my internal thoughts are abstract and nonverbal.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#625

Post by kmonsen »

bananamerica wrote: post #542
pazimzadeh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be like that, and it was helpful in many ways as I seemed to always be ready for wherever a conversation might go. But I wasn't living in the moment. Now I actively stop myself from simulating the various branches of potential conversations. It feels good to live in the moment (shaking my head a little when I feel it starting helps). The downside is that I don't have as many prepared responses and am more e…

On the other hand, it is so satisfying when a conversation hits a branch you worked on for hours on end! Very useful for dating and job interviews. Especially for people with foot-in-mouth disease [1] [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/foot-in-mouth_disease

Is it though? I have found a job and wife that is OK with my foot in mouth disease and think it works better when you sell who you are. Don't get me wrong self improvement is important, but so is telling people who are going to spend time with you what they are going to get.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#626

Post by bagacrap »

ianai wrote: post #581
bagacrap wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you to read about the default mode network. I wager what you experience as an internal monologue correlates to high activity in the DMN.

Got a book or reference in mind? I’d love more on the DMN.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4334486/

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#627

Post by caymanjim »

perl4ever wrote: post #376
40acres wrote: post #105

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…

"interviewing myself in a variety of roles to navigate my thoughts on things" I used to from time to time imagine my half of a conversation in which I was showing around someone notable who had traveled through time to get to the present day. Maybe someone from 1,000 years ago or maybe from 50. That is, for entertainment, not to cope with anything. I never felt like my imagination was quite good enough to turn it int…

> I used to from time to time imagine my half of a conversation in which I was showing around someone notable who had traveled through time to get to the present day. Maybe someone from 1,000 years ago or maybe from 50. That is, for entertainment, not to cope with anything. I never felt like my imagination was quite good enough to turn it into fiction.

I do this all the time. It's usually Ben Franklin, but sometimes it'll be someone else. Almost always a scientist who'd be curious and I think fun to hang out with. I don't know how long I've been doing this, but it's probably at least a couple times a year for the past decade or more. I imagine how I'd explain modern technology and how he might react.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#628

Post by basilgohar »

I hope that others get out of the amazing comments and conversations here that we all think alike in some ways and differently in others.

More importantly, I hope more people can be convinced to reach the conclusion that different ways of thinking and/or doing things in no way automatically mean they are superior/inferior, but rather, that for how amazingly complex we are as creatures, different ways of doing things may be better for different people.

tl;dr Different strokes for different folks.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#629

Post by checkyoursudo »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #91
checkyoursudo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). I didn't realize that, for example, "mental image" was not just, like, a metaphor for thinking. When I close my eyes, it's black. Just, black. Well, you know, depending on how bright the lights are, etc.

> I realized a few years ago that I have aphantasia, and it blew my mind that most people could conjure images of things when they closed their eyes (to some greater or lesser degree, but more than my zero degree). Then it might blow your mind further to know that I can visualize things easier with my eyes open. I overlay them onto my visual field and they're _far_ more vivid with my eyes open than shut, by an order…

That would have blown my mind a few years ago before I knew about aphantasia, but not any more. I have spent a while digging deeper into it, and it has even come up in my recent graduate studies in cognitive science (to the great amusement of my program colleagues).

I am 100% jealous of your ability to do that, however.

I have recently learned that it might be possible to train myself to invoke mental images. There is a technique where a person with aphantasia sits their eyes shut and starts by imagining, e.g., a green apple. But you don't imagine it fully at first. You start with its different qualities, like imagine roundness for a while. And then greenness. Then shininess. Then some gradient. Then a stem. Then more detailed shape. Et cetera.

I have had a tiny bit of success with this technique, or at least I have fooled myself into thinking I have? If I try this, after a while I can start to picture a green apple, though it is like a faint, faded ancient photograph with almost no color or detail and certainly no vividness. But there does seem to be some little bit of something there.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#630

Post by jdbernard »

baddox wrote: post #601
username90 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't describe one of your thoughts with language, I would say that you must not understand that thought. I've heard that before and it is definitely bullshit, thinking like that will just hold you and others back. It is true that if I can't describe it in words then I can't prove to others that I understand it, but it isn't true that I can't prove to myself that I understand it using my own minds language.…

I’m not sure how it would hold you back. On the contrary, it should motivate you to seek further understanding of your thoughts. To me, it just doesn’t make sense definitionally to say you understand anything if you can not describe it in language. It would be like saying you understand an algorithm but you can’t express it as a computer program. But this isn’t to say that you cannot act in accordance with your thoug…

To me it doesn't make sense to say definitionally that you can't understand without expressing in an external language.

First, my understanding even of English is nuanced and not entirely shared. There are lots of times where I capture something in prose but feel and even explicitly state that the the words don't really completely capture the meaning and I'm relying on a shared understanding of the connotations of the words to convey what they do not. This implies that we have a strong grasp of our intended meaning that supercedes the meaning captured in language.

Also, there have been many times where I'll learn a new word, especially words borrowed from other languages, and think, "Ah! Now I can more exactly express what I'm thinking!" My understanding hasn't changed at all, I'm just better able to express it in language.

Another example: there are a lot of concepts, geo-spatial relationships between dimensional objects for example, that I never consciously verbalize, even internally, yet I can clearly hold in my head.

It does seem plausible that this is another difference in mental models between people.

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