Not everyone has an internal monologue

1) experience the words as if I'm saying them out loud but don't vocalize them. This is similar to how a lot of people read, so I figure I'm technically subvocalizing them.

2) especially when doing math or programming I simply know what I was about to think using method 1) without any specific words springing up.

I can't figure out if method 1 is me having an auditory internal monologue or if it's non-auditory. But at least you have a second experience to contextualize with.

EDIT: I would also like to add that sometimes when programming my mind switches to a graph-like representation that I start to manipulate physically. That is, I'll actually move my fingers in the air and move around the idea of this graph to "view" it from different perspectives and at different levels "Minority Report"-stye. Yes, that is something I try not to do anywhere but at home.

Very little "words", however, unless I'm actually talking aloud or writing.

Come to think of it, I wonder if this could have anything to do with why I always found "reading comprehension" tests curiously difficult & strangely capricious in school.

1. On one end of the spectrum, people may think and act without tying words to concepts at all.

2. Then, they may think by forming words in sentences, but not consider it "talking to themselves" or consider themselves as "hearing" a voice in their head.

3. Next, one may say words and sentences to themselves and seem to hear them, but their audatory nerves are not involved in any way.

4. Finally, there may be people who actually "hear" the voice, but somehow know that it isn't coming in through their ears.

I would be in camp 3 whenever I am "thinking" but in camp 1 whenever I am just doing something I've done before and don't need to think about it. I talk to myself out loud, and to my dog, and sing and crack jokes when nobody is listening.

People in camp 4 who also don't associate the voice as coming from themself are generally considered mentally ill. Sometimes on the edge of wake and sleep you might hear a voice, not your own, clearly aurally, but that's not too unusual of a hallucination to have.

I've heard that in the early 20th century, anyone in camp 3 or 4 was considered insane, perhaps even camp 2 was unusual, and that normal people were in camp 1, and anybody who talked to themselves out loud was definitely insane. And I suspect that television and a lack of long boring quiet work changed how we think. And I suspect being in camp 3 or 4 is associated with anxiety and depression, but also with higher intelligence. I have no data to back up any of these suspicions.

Oh, and Buddhist style meditation drops you back into Camp 1.