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People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

theguardian.com

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Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#111

Post by checkyoursudo »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #107
checkyoursudo wrote: post #24

A couple of years ago, I learned that other people see images in their minds. Now I learn that people hear voices in their minds in a way that is dramatically different to mine. When I am thinking, there is pure silence and blank-ness in my mind. I don't see anything in my blind mind's eye, and I don't hear anything in my deaf mind's ear. It seems that I can create a monologue in my mind, but I have to be consciously…

Question for you, and those like you: If you don't see images in your mind, do you see images when you dream? If you don't have an "inner voice", do you hear sound when you dream? I have no point I'm trying to make here. I just wonder if there's a correlation with dreams.

I do see images and hear sound when I dream, and when I daydream! That is interesting, isn't it? I have always thought so. So, maybe it's like that unconscious memory crystallization subsystem works, but the conscious recall subsystem doesn't work quite right. I suspect that these are two quite different things, though I don't really know.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#112

Post by jimmygrapes »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #92
dmitrygr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a simple test Close your eyes and imagine a triangle. Now, quickly, what color was it? If you have an answer, you do not have aphantasia. If you have no answer, you likely have aphantasia - your mind instantiated a concept of a triangle, but until the question of color came up, it was irrelevant and was not considered

Not a good example, IMO. A triangle is defined as 3 points with 3 lines connecting each consecutive point. A better example would be: think of Tony the Tiger, now what colors are his skin, stripes, and bandana? But that's also not perfect because people are along a spectrum in the amount of detail they're able to see.

I can't see Tony's skin since it's covered by fur unless you count the "toe beans" and nose

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#113

Post by kzrdude »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #104
kzrdude wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aphantasia: Is there a simple test or procedure we can use to make it easier to decide to what degree we have this or not? It just seems like a topic where expectations can differ a lot. Since it's hard to clearly explain what visualizing feels like and doesn't. Some people might even be very normal and yet disappointed and think they are missing something. I don't think my mind's eye is particularly strong for examp…

I’m not going to say it’s a useful test, but how does https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29088032 work for you?

Cool question. I definitely visualize the various rooms in my apt., Indoors perspective, when answering the question, doing so without prompting. It feels effortless and the visualizations are rather basic, without details, but they are spatial with perspective and I see the shape of the room and the window.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#114

Post by kzrdude »

dmitrygr wrote: post #50
kzrdude wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aphantasia: Is there a simple test or procedure we can use to make it easier to decide to what degree we have this or not? It just seems like a topic where expectations can differ a lot. Since it's hard to clearly explain what visualizing feels like and doesn't. Some people might even be very normal and yet disappointed and think they are missing something. I don't think my mind's eye is particularly strong for examp…

> Is there a simple test Close your eyes and imagine a triangle. Now, quickly, what color was it? If you have an answer, you do not have aphantasia. If you have no answer, you likely have aphantasia - your mind instantiated a concept of a triangle, but until the question of color came up, it was irrelevant and was not considered

I can't even bring up a triangle until I made it concrete. I imagined I had cut one out in plywood.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#115

Post by jimmygrapes »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #110
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so incredible for me to, well, imagine (no pun intended). I’m super curious now and hope you don’t mind. If you are currently not outside your house, and I ask you to tell me how many windows your house has – and I also ask you to not step outside your house and not go from room to room, literally counting the windows – how would you do this? When I do this, I can‘t help to go from room to room in my mind, vi…

What an interesting mental exercise. I have an inventory of concepts, data, and other random thoughts in my head. If you ask me how many windows are in each room, I can recall this information (probably even relatively accurately!). I cannot picture the room or the windows, however. So, I can tally up the windows and be reasonably certain, only because I know how many there are (in this house, I know how many are in…

One of the informal tests I found interesting was to play some of those "spot the differences in two pictures" games. First do one where the pictures are side by side to get your brain used to recognizing differences and hopefully reduce the variable of "how do I even do this". Then do a game where one picture shows up and waits for you to look at it and memorize it, then shows the slightly different picture and let you identify the areas of difference. Finally, have a picture which clearly identifies the differences (by circling them or something), waits for you to intentionally proceed, then shows you a slightly different picture where you select a difference but then have a multiple choice question about what is different (eg "the mailbox color in the first picture was blue/green/red/white") for each.

I haven't seen one of these online yet, and I took it as part of a battery of mental health/intelligence tests nearly 20 years ago, but I wonder how hard it would be to make one and conduct studies from it today.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#116

Post by conradludgate »

I wonder if this is why rubber duck programming is so effective for a lot of engineers. They have a hard time with their own inner dialogue that they need to physically force themselves to talk out a problem to get their brains to create the right connections

Interestingly enough, my inner dialogue is usually me as a tutor, describing my actions to someone (myself?) as I go. As I'm writing code and I realise one of my explanations doesn't quite make sense, I realise that the code isn't probably that great so I rethink the problem

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#117

Post by pseudalopex »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #110
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so incredible for me to, well, imagine (no pun intended). I’m super curious now and hope you don’t mind. If you are currently not outside your house, and I ask you to tell me how many windows your house has – and I also ask you to not step outside your house and not go from room to room, literally counting the windows – how would you do this? When I do this, I can‘t help to go from room to room in my mind, vi…

What an interesting mental exercise. I have an inventory of concepts, data, and other random thoughts in my head. If you ask me how many windows are in each room, I can recall this information (probably even relatively accurately!). I cannot picture the room or the windows, however. So, I can tally up the windows and be reasonably certain, only because I know how many there are (in this house, I know how many are in…

> When you are "visiting" each room in your house, I think you are walking through a recalled simulation that is created in your working memory, e.g. a visuo-spatial sketchpad, using the same type of information that is stored in my brain.

It's an interesting idea. But I don't think most people remember faces for example like that.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#118

Post by josephg »

chippy wrote: post #49
josephg wrote: post #15

I started doing improv comedy classes a few years ago. It’s terrifying. My friends would share stories of what their inner critics were saying about their performances. “You were rubbish and everyone was knows it!”. It was weird for me - my mind doesn’t have a voice like that. “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. But I still felt crippling shame after bad scenes in class. In quiet moments my mind is fu…

> “Hah maybe I don’t have an inner critic” I thought. thats your inner voice!

Not quite ... there's (ironically) a language gap here. Those words are what I get when I lend my capacity for words to my thoughts, like I'm doing now. But thats a translation. The thoughts don't seem to start in language.

Maybe another way to describe it is - I understand my thoughts before I know the right words to use to describe my thoughts out loud. In conversation I sometimes find I'll start explaining something; only to notice that the words aren't the right translation for the concept in my head. "Sorry, thats not quite right - its more like ... this".

The other day I had a feeling which was a mix between boredom and anger. Like, a sort of judgemental boredom. I don't think english has a word for that feeling; but neither "boredom" nor "anger" would be a sufficient translation of what I felt. Its like that.

Or another example - I was practicing drawing yesterday. I drew a character's nose, but my line looked wrong and I had to rub it out and redraw it. I don't have any words for the shape my wonky line made. I couldn't tell you in words how it made the face look, or how it needed to be fixed. I could try, but any words I use would be an awkward approximation. I know exactly what was wrong with the shape. But words to describe it would be a sketch compared to my mind's photograph. (Except its not like a photograph either! Aah its happening now too.)

Lots of thoughts work the same way. At least for me. Is it really not the same for everyone?

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#119

Post by meowface »

andrew_gs wrote: post #75
meowface wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some spatial intelligence tests that essentially require mentally rotating and flipping 3D objects in your mind's eye. That could maybe be one way. Can't speak to the quality of this test, but here's one that might apply: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/tests/iq/visual-spatial-i...

I don't think this tests aphantasia at all really. I have a very weak mind's eye and I've always been able to score very highly on visual spatial recognition tests. I can still conceptualize and rotate items even if I can't picture them clearly.

Interesting. I always "perform" the rotation in my mind's eye, so I guess I figured that's how most others did, too. Typical mind fallacy strikes again.

Re: People who have unusual, or non-existent, inner voices

#120

Post by princesse »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #107
checkyoursudo wrote: post #24

A couple of years ago, I learned that other people see images in their minds. Now I learn that people hear voices in their minds in a way that is dramatically different to mine. When I am thinking, there is pure silence and blank-ness in my mind. I don't see anything in my blind mind's eye, and I don't hear anything in my deaf mind's ear. It seems that I can create a monologue in my mind, but I have to be consciously…

Question for you, and those like you: If you don't see images in your mind, do you see images when you dream? If you don't have an "inner voice", do you hear sound when you dream? I have no point I'm trying to make here. I just wonder if there's a correlation with dreams.

I do not see anything while dreaming. It is a constant source of slight anxiety as I can be quite conscious and the blindness is puzzling. In daily life I can project myself in some mental space (ie my kitchen) and perceive where the boundaries of things would be, but none of this process has anything to do with vision of sight. It's more like extend proprioception.

If you place your hand on a wall, then close your eyes, then remove your hand, I suspect you'll still feel where the wall is. Even if you picture something completely different in your head, the wall is still there I suppose? My guess is that my extend proprioception (or whatever the right name for this would be) is more fine tuned and apt than someone with a mind eye, but I can't really know. :|

I also do not hear sounds while dreaming, but then again I don't really have an inner monologue anymore, that went away at the same time I learned programming and I don't think it's a coincidence. I do verbalize in my head when reading conversation-like stuff (HN, slack, etc.), but you won't catch me with any internal monologue while reading ingredients, jira tickets, etc.

While dreaming, I can have conversations but there's no gradual arrival of content, it's instantaneous, it was not yet "said" or it was.

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