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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

#121

Post by _ink_ »

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 have Aphantasia. I cannot recall any sensoric input, be it visual, audio, taste, smell, touch. I have an inner monologue. I rarly remember my dreams, but when I do I now I saw something. As for hearing I cannot really answer it. Currently I do not think that I hear sounds while dreaming. I can talk with people, but I believe everybody sounds like my inner voice. Again, it is really hard to tell, since I cannot recall it.

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

#122

Post by Jensson »

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…

Yeah, I don't really understand how people can have an inner voice. I vocalize text when I read, but it isn't like there is a voice in my head saying "I shall now go to the store", rather I just imagine myself going to the store or taking a shower etc, there is no voice I use to reason about problems etc. It would be so strange to talk to myself rather than just imagine the situations, why would you do that?

And then if you talk to yourself about everything, how do you think about things you can't talk about? When I imagine going to the store I can imagine all the different routes etc in a second, there is no way I can talk about the different routes in a second in an inner voice, so to me the inner voice seems utterly useless at best or it hurts your ability to think at worst.

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

#123

Post by Jensson »

ryan93 wrote: post #64

Im insanely skeptical about peoples self reports on this kind of thing. I suspect the vast majority of people have similar experiences visualizing an apple or thinking through a problem.

Anyone who can solve a problem without being able to describe what they did in words isn't using an inner voice to solve the problem. So if there exists people who mostly reason about problems using words then there are at least two kinds of ways to reason about problems.

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

#124

Post by boc »

ars wrote: post #55
boc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're rela…

> So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? I can picture the concept of Mount Everest. But it's more of an abstract idea. Like I don't actually see a mountain in color as if it were in front of me. But there's this "mental concept" sitting in front of me. Are you able to actually "see" a picture? Are most people able to do that? I've never noticed a limitati…

Not sure about others but I can see what my brain thinks is a picture of Mount Everest. It's not a photorealistic image because I've never actually seen it IRL, but it's just a composite idea of Everest from movies, YouTube videos, images, etc. Now it's not quite the same as seeing something like you would through your eyes - you still see darkness when you close your eyes - but it's a vision that you can see in your "mind's eye" which is in color, vivid, you can hear it, smell it, feel it.

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

#125

Post by boc »

princesse wrote: post #120
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

This is wild! When I dream it feels nearly indistinguishable from conscious life. Full color, sounds, pain, fear, people - weirdest of all is when people in my dreams solve problems that I can't solve, like math problems. Really trips you out because it's all in your brain, and "you" were the one that also solved the problem. I chalk it up to the solution also being incorrect but feeling correct in the dream, otherwise it would be quite terrifying.

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

#126

Post by psyc »

boc wrote: post #125
princesse wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

This is wild! When I dream it feels nearly indistinguishable from conscious life. Full color, sounds, pain, fear, people - weirdest of all is when people in my dreams solve problems that I can't solve, like math problems. Really trips you out because it's all in your brain, and "you" were the one that also solved the problem. I chalk it up to the solution also being incorrect but feeling correct in the dream, otherwi…

I’ve definitely done math in a dream, checked the answer immediately upon waking, and it checked out. My brother reports the same. He also claims to exclusively dream lucidly.

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

#127

Post by garaetjjte »

boc wrote: post #35
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…

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're rela…

>So wait, if you close your eyes

Is this just figurative phrase or some people need to close their eyes to visualize images? I can imagine things, but they are not real visual stimuli that I see, they are more abstract going directly to the mind. Thus it doesn't matter whether my eyes are closed or what I'm looking at, it is independent from real sight.

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

#128

Post by Aethylia »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #63
Aethylia wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't directly related. It's likely a product of how you were taught to read. You can learn to read without it by trying to have the inner voice say something different like 'a, e, i, o, u' while reading. It takes practice but it increases your reading speed.

I just reread your post with my inner voice repeating “foo” over and over. Is that the kind of thing I should practice? I don’t understand.

Yes that works too, probably a nicer one for the HN audience as well! If you can learn to read that way, eventually you won't need to repeat any more and you can read without the voice.

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

#129

Post by Aethylia »

weaksauce wrote: post #8
Aethylia wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't directly related. It's likely a product of how you were taught to read. You can learn to read without it by trying to have the inner voice say something different like 'a, e, i, o, u' while reading. It takes practice but it increases your reading speed.

Is comprehension changed?

I don't know of any particular studies on this, but in my own experience comprehension is changed by how quickly I read, not whether the voice is used. Learning this just raises the speed limit for when you want to read easily comprehensible texts such as news or comments.

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

#130

Post by josephg »

Jensson wrote: post #122
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…

Yeah, I don't really understand how people can have an inner voice. I vocalize text when I read, but it isn't like there is a voice in my head saying "I shall now go to the store", rather I just imagine myself going to the store or taking a shower etc, there is no voice I use to reason about problems etc. It would be so strange to talk to myself rather than just imagine the situations, why would you do that? And then…

Yeah I can't tell if we actually think differently, or if we just observe our minds differently. If I frame the question to myself as "do I know the words for what I'm thinking?" then the words for what I'm thinking about instantly start arriving. But if I frame the question to myself of "what do these thoughts feel like?" then my thoughts feel a bit formless and instinctive. (Or if I catch myself daydreaming, I can't remember any "inner language" for hours).

I'm not convinced our minds are actually different in kind, as opposed to just having quality differences in how we perceive ourselves. We can run the experiment right now. Does anyone actually have an internal voice narrating the feeling you get watching a sunset?

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