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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

#151
post #22

This is going to be like when I discovered I had aphantasia isn’t it. People are hearing actual voices inside their heads? I can sometimes have a train of thought that I could vocalise if I wanted to but I don’t actually hear it as a voice. Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

> People are hearing actual voices inside their heads?

Yes. It's my voice, unless it's something written by a person whose voice I'm familiar with.

> Can you all hear things like music and other sounds too?

I can hear music sometimes. Especially just a moment before waking up.

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

#152
All of these descriptions are gorgeous! They are really great starting points for inquiry and meditation. Things you may or may not observe when meditating, looking at your own thoughts.

I've met plenty of people who rusj to judge that they think in a certain way, or that they prefer one mode of learning, or that they visualize instead of verbalize. All of those are valid perspectives and opinions. Some may be real, some may be imperfect descriptions, some may only be true at the time of speaking when the person is asked.

I'm loving this comment thread, thanks guys!

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

#153

> Many of the people I speak to learned late in life that their inner voices were not the norm. For years, Worrall thought that other people also had attics in their brains. I went through exactly the same situation around 10 years ago, but it was about mental imaging. Do you know people can actually visualize and see things when they close there eyes? You probably do, but it took me 25 years to figure out that for m…

I don't even have to close them, I can reproduce pictures of objects, people, scenery etc in my mind while my eyes are open and actively observing other things. As I type this comment I've got an image of a girl I saw yesterday fixed in my mind, as if looking at a picture of her. I also assumed this was the norm.

I went through a phase that lasted several months, in which I practiced daily drawing portraits and caricatures.

Towards the end I debeloped a photographic memory for faces. I could go out for an evening, and later I could see all the faces I interacted with that evening crystal clear, and draw their likeness referencing only my mind's eye.

When I stopped practicing portraiture the magical ability went away.

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

#154
post #148

I never heard of inner voices, or have discussed such a thing with other people. Is that a cultural thing? I am totally surprised I thought it was a literal construct when I saw it in the movies etc Anyway I had read that when you “vocalize” inside your head during e.g. reading you severely slow down. Isn’t that the same with any kind of thinking? Brain works with abstractions won’t involving your “voice” functions f…

I could say similar things the other way around, but that doesn't make sense as a way to think about this ways of being.

People used to one way or another from childhood don't really recognize any drawbacks to their way of thinking or not.

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

#155

> Many of the people I speak to learned late in life that their inner voices were not the norm. For years, Worrall thought that other people also had attics in their brains. I went through exactly the same situation around 10 years ago, but it was about mental imaging. Do you know people can actually visualize and see things when they close there eyes? You probably do, but it took me 25 years to figure out that for m…

I can barely do this, at a naturally-occurring rate of maybe one image a month or less. But I can pick up music instantly.

Really interesting in this thread about how so many see images or hear voices. I always have strong threads of music, always available at any moment. I bet all musicians have this. I used to wish when I was a child that I could jack my brain to a stereo system for instant playback and bypass the effort of writing things down.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Personally, my inner voice doesn’t narrate; it only makes logical arguments or explanations. But it does occasionally seem to ‘go on autopilot’: my conscious focus is on some pressing but mindless task, and then I catch my inner voice in the middle of explaining some random trivial thing.

At other times, when I’m in a relaxed and unfocused state, particularly in the shower, my inner voice goes in circles and explains the same thing over and over. This tends to happen when I find an explanation really logically satisfying or interesting. This is perhaps a less interesting situation than the last one, because going through an argument repeatedly to understand it better is probably something that everyone does. But when it goes in circles too many times, I get sick of the topic, and there’s a distinct sense of “will you just shut up already”. Then I have to actively come up with something else to think about.

In both situations, my inner voice is becoming slightly intrusive, acting like a distinct entity from my conscious focus; and it always comes in the form of words even if I’m not actively seeking words. I think that goes beyond just “do I know the words for what I’m thinking”.

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

#158
My inner voice helps me tremendously while working on a proof or an algorithm: I say the individual steps in my head and then I remember them better. I can even do this with writing blog posts, but then when I get to the keyboard I still know the gist but not the precise phrasing, which is a shame since the original phrasing sounded so good in my head. Does anyone have a solution for that?

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

#159
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

Glowing lines in a black space. Color is a pale off white. It's rotated slightly in 3d space but it's a triangle.

Edit: oh yeah, I didn't close my eyes, sorry. I just thought about it as I was reading and the image flashed for an immeasurable time unit multiple times each time I gave it a bit of thought.

It's extremely easy for me to just, almost like daydreaming, to have my vision darken and have my minds eye take over for microseconds for me to picture things. Guess like built in AR.

My inner voice is also incredibly controllable and more than just a voice. It's just a playback device at this point. Whatever I want i can make it audible.

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

#160
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…

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 did it correctly enough apparently ("Your score on the test was the top of the charts") but I didn't have to visualise anything (it's very difficult for me to visualise anything more than fleeting glimpses of vague shapes).

The answers are easy enough to find without having to perform any imaginary rotation but just eliminating candidates one by one by looking at which features would match or not.

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