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Inner Speech

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Re: Inner Speech

#101

Post by throwuwu »

stavros wrote: post #60
teamonkey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how I would describe it, as someone without much of an inner eye or an inner voice. I can have an inner voice. I use it to practice how things sound in my head, or if I want to be very specific about wording, or when trying to parse some complex text, or to work out a sum. That’s how I know that most of the time I don’t use an inner voice to think. Most of the time it’s like I have thoughts without wo…

Same here, and the thought itself is basically instant, so why go through the long process of narrating the thought to myself? I just have the next one.

This is getting more confusing. Just because you can think in words doesn’t mean you enumerate everything in words. I think of myself as someone with an inner voice that I use often but not everything that happens in my mind is subvocalized. A lot of it is imagining or recalling images or movements, there’s spatial awareness when thinking about positioning things and manipulating objects, there are non verbal recollections like music or recalling a sound something made and there are thoughts that are more like pure concepts or feelings. Maybe there is some misunderstanding about how the inner voice is used or maybe I’m wrong and there are people who exclusively think in words?

Re: Inner Speech

#102

Post by stavros »

throwuwu wrote: post #101
stavros wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, and the thought itself is basically instant, so why go through the long process of narrating the thought to myself? I just have the next one.

This is getting more confusing. Just because you can think in words doesn’t mean you enumerate everything in words. I think of myself as someone with an inner voice that I use often but not everything that happens in my mind is subvocalized. A lot of it is imagining or recalling images or movements, there’s spatial awareness when thinking about positioning things and manipulating objects, there are non verbal recolle…

There are people who have all their thoughts in words (most people, in fact). I don't think they actually have their thoughts in words, I think they just narrate them to themselves after they have them.

I used to do this, but I stopped at some point.

Re: Inner Speech

#103

Post by russellbeattie »

I don't have an internal dialogue, but I do have imaginary conversations and I compose blog posts, thread comments (like this one) and emails in my head quite a lot.

But speaking to myself as a separate voice? It only happens when I'm high. Really. I only discovered that a few years ago when marijuana became legal in California. I was worried at first that I was having some sort of mental break, because I'm really not used to having two separate voices like that talking to each other. Then I looked it up and realized that many (most?) people have some sort of inner dialogue. Thank goodness. I truly thought I was losing my mind. I wonder what it is about THC which causes that effect in my brain? Also, I don't drink - I wonder if many people have a voice because they're commonly imbibing, even a little.

I would guess my lack of inner voice is why I tend to blurt out what I'm thinking way more than other people. And I'm not one to engage in conversations in a contemplative way. I realize now that many people I've talked to who seem like they're speaking carefully are actually having a whole other voice in their head making observations, etc.

Re: Inner Speech

#104

Post by jddj »

jvanderbot wrote: post #99
vidarh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes beyond that, I think, in that many of us have gone most of our lives believing others used this language metaphorically, and assigning a meaning to these words. I was about 45 by the point I realized most people to varying degrees actually meant that they saw things when imagining them. And so to me it's not that there no thought behind it, because I do something when I "imagine" something, just not the same…

This is so earth shattering to me. I'm completely unable to actually "see" anything when I imagine it, but I think I can visualize in the sense of recalling or imagining how it would look. Do people actually close their eyes and hallucinate or am I reading way to far into this?

I think there's some of that over-reading.

In these exchanges the language typically gets sloppy and one person's "see" gets translated and reacted to as whoa, with their eyes?.

If you can imagine a red car and see it in your mind's eye (fairly ephemeral, especially if you force it, and nothing like as vivid as a hallucination) I think you're pretty normal from having followed a few of these threads over the years.

Re: Inner Speech

#105

Post by z5h »

prossercj wrote: post #83
politelemon wrote: post #2

It's a bit odd reading this because I learned just a few months ago, right here, that I am aphantastic (no mental imagery). Shortly after that, while discussing with some coworkers, I also learned I am anauralic (no inner voice). It appears they do sometimes go together: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551557/ I think for those of us who don't have an inner voice, section "3.2 The Semantic Content View"…

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?

Do you need an inner-inner voice before your inner voice speaks? To figure out what your inner voice will say before it says it?

Re: Inner Speech

#106

Post by earthboundkid »

z5h wrote: post #105
prossercj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?

Do you need an inner-inner voice before your inner voice speaks? To figure out what your inner voice will say before it says it?

I find if I listen closely to my inner voice, it starts going in a circle for exactly this reason. This makes me think maybe the actual order is backwards and the voice comes second, but it feels first because brains are weird.

Re: Inner Speech

#107

Post by vanjajaja1 »

russellbeattie wrote: post #103

I don't have an internal dialogue, but I do have imaginary conversations and I compose blog posts, thread comments (like this one) and emails in my head quite a lot. But speaking to myself as a separate voice? It only happens when I'm high. Really. I only discovered that a few years ago when marijuana became legal in California. I was worried at first that I was having some sort of mental break, because I'm really no…

.. two separate voices? do they sound different or.. how do you identify which is which voice?

Re: Inner Speech

#108

Post by jancsika »

razerbeans wrote: post #97
jimkleiber wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lots of questions, as I find it hard for me to imagine: 1) When you read, do you ever say the words in your head or is it always more like an automatic recognition of the characters without voicing them? 2) Can you force yourself to have an inner voice, aka forcing yourself to say something like "I am thinking to myself right now"? Also, it's ok if you don't want to answer but I'd be curious to learn more ab…

I'll answer from my own experience (with no inner voice): 1) I have to be very explicit when reading with an inner voice (which goes to your second point). Generally, it is a kind of recognition that a word has a meaning and I "feel" that meaning, if that makes sense? 2) Yes. It feels unnatural though.

But then how do you do what I'd consider simple things like sanity checks?

For example, hooking up jumper cables. I suppose I could hook them up without an inner dialog.

But then at any point if I get confused or remember that dangerous things can happen, I can go back and compare against a list in my head of the steps to hook them up. E.g., don't let clamps touch, start with the dead battery, positive first, crank and rev the working car, etc.

How can you get the same type of sanity check without an inner dialog? Do you memorize an ordered sequence of "feels" that correspond to the steps?

Re: Inner Speech

#109

Post by wharvle »

prossercj wrote: post #83
politelemon wrote: post #2

It's a bit odd reading this because I learned just a few months ago, right here, that I am aphantastic (no mental imagery). Shortly after that, while discussing with some coworkers, I also learned I am anauralic (no inner voice). It appears they do sometimes go together: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551557/ I think for those of us who don't have an inner voice, section "3.2 The Semantic Content View"…

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?

I dunno how it worked, but I went much of my childhood without an inner voice. Didn’t seem to hinder me at all.

One day I played around with imagining my thoughts as a voice in my head. Kept it up for a few more days. When I tried to stop, found I couldn’t, not entirely. Had one ever since.

I still wouldn’t say my inner voice forms my words for speech or much of my writing, even now. If I consider what I might say ahead of time, yes, if I’m just talking, no. And of course if I think about it (as I am now) then it gets more involved in that process.

Re: Inner Speech

#110

Post by firecall »

prossercj wrote: post #83
politelemon wrote: post #2

It's a bit odd reading this because I learned just a few months ago, right here, that I am aphantastic (no mental imagery). Shortly after that, while discussing with some coworkers, I also learned I am anauralic (no inner voice). It appears they do sometimes go together: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8551557/ I think for those of us who don't have an inner voice, section "3.2 The Semantic Content View"…

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?

There is a famously extensive and popular Reddit thread about this!

Which I'm sure someone will link to :-)

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