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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

#211

Post by gtardini »

kzrdude wrote: post #32
StreakyCobra wrote: post #21

> 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…

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 think this is what you are looking for

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094522...

The authors also include the GitHub with the code for the experiment. Very interesting

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

#212

Post by spyder »

johnchristopher wrote: post #186

Wait a minute... I thought I had internal monologue because I can hear myself speaking thoughts and myself talking to myself (it's like talking out loud but in your head) but reading some of the comments here it seems like people have multiple inner voices and that's what they mean by internal monologue ? I don't have inner voices, there's only me up there (and I do a lot of self pitying and most of the monologue is…

Hm... multiple voices would be inner dialog, not monologue.

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

#213

Post by distances »

kzrdude wrote: post #32
StreakyCobra wrote: post #21

> 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…

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…

A simple quick test I've heard: imagine a ball with wings in front of you.

Now, what was the colour of the ball, and what kind of wings did it have?

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

#214

Post by fbanon »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #101
fbanon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. Nah, it's not like that. When we imagine something it's not like we actually see those things like real visual stimuli. The experience is more abstract than that. There is a vague visual aspect to it, but it's not hi-def like real vision, just fragments appearing then disappearing in your mind. So it's not at…

I have no first-hand experience with what it's like, so I cannot comment on the veracity of what people have told me or I have read about it since learning about aphantasia. However, my wife assures me that it is in fact like a real, hi-def movie playing in her mind, and I have since read a number of accounts of artists who literally just draw or paint exactly what they see with their minds' eye(s), and talked with p…

I've asked a few people and everyone said that their imagination is not as hi-def as their vision. I.e. when they imagine something it's not like an image was cut & pasted onto their visual field.

So I'm pretty sure your friends were exaggerating, or meant hi-def in a different sense.

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

#215

Post by junga »

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.

Hmm, I then hear my inner voice repeating that text and shouting FOO at the same time. It makes me feel stupid because I can't stop repeating what I read.

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

#216

Post by distances »

anfelor wrote: post #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?

I agree with the other commenter, this is not an inner voice in the sense of the article.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] »

StreakyCobra wrote: post #21

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by distances »

gala8y wrote: post #194
johnchristopher wrote: post #186

Wait a minute... I thought I had internal monologue because I can hear myself speaking thoughts and myself talking to myself (it's like talking out loud but in your head) but reading some of the comments here it seems like people have multiple inner voices and that's what they mean by internal monologue ? I don't have inner voices, there's only me up there (and I do a lot of self pitying and most of the monologue is…

> Do most people mean "multiple voices" when they say "inner monologue" ? You will find different conceptualizations of this phenomena, but generally speaking it is very prolific to treat mind (term used imprecisely) as comprised of many sub-parts (sub-personalities/voices/selves/states). You can treat them as separate, functional patterns of behavior with their own agendas, feelings, beliefs, etc. The fun part is th…

The concept as described in the article is totally foreign to me. Would there be some upside of trying to awaken some additional inner voice? Is that even possible?

I can easily speak in my mind, but it's just me, and I'm in total control. There are no other personas. I of course sometimes get spontaneous thoughts, sometimes even very unwanted ones, but they are my thoughts and I can easily dismiss them. I don't do dialogues in my mind, and there's no critique or negative feedback, just self-reflection. Thoughts in my mind do not keep me awake at night. I don't feel like I'm missing anything really.

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

#220

Post by alok-g »

bengale wrote: 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?

Just to be clear, I do not hear my own voice in the way I would if I am listening to a recording with my voice. There is just a continuous train of thoughts, in one of the languages I know well, coming as if it has bypassed the ears and came directly to my attention or conscious access. I clearly know that it's not coming via the ears.

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

Yes. Just in the same way as the above.

There have been times when lyrics of a song played back in my mind where I had no a priori awareness that I even remember those lyrics.

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