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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

#101

Post by checkyoursudo »

fbanon wrote: post #66
checkyoursudo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining. My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. I am jealous. My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes. On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it…

>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 plenty of people who have varying degrees of inner vision.

I take you at your word for your experience. I likewise have no reason to think my wife, for example, is exaggerating to me. My wife has a photographic memory, and she can literally recreate stuff down to almost absurd details. I think it is possible you may be underestimating what other people see in their minds. :)

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

#102

Post by id »

hanoz wrote: post #71

As with perennial Hacker News favourite Aphantasia, the discussion does leave me with the distint impression that the spectrum of reported condition is more a function of our inability to convey and compare the inner experience, than of variation in the inner experience itself.

I'm pretty sure that's why it's a favorite - you read a different account and can't really believe it, so you write a comment to make sure they actually do experience the same thing.

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

#103

Post by ManuelKiessling »

jeroenhd wrote: post #61
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…

I'm the exact same way. No mind's eye, no constant internal monologue (or dialogue), mostly just calm and silence. I think I can sort of visualize voices and music, but clearly not as well as other seem to be able to. I always thought people who hear entirely understandable voices were the mentally ill people you hear about in the news and in fiction, not for that to be the norm. I do wonder about the statistics on t…

Guess the difference is that normal(?) people like me “create” or recall the voices in our heads, while for the mentally ill, the voices “come” to them like from the “outside”? Eww, I realize it’s really hard to conceptualize this stuff and put it into words…

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

#104

Post by ManuelKiessling »

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

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

#105

Post by micromacrofoot »

id wrote: post #97
towb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh good. Think everyone here is trying themselves right now. I don't really see anything when I picture stuff in my head, it is more that I know how something looks or should look or could look and it's much less than a picture, but for sure more than words. And for the inner voice, I hear my own voice in my head, it's like I'm talking to myself all the time, like a crazy person. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>I hear my own voice in my head But you don't actually hear anything either, right? I mean, does it sound like a recording of you talking? Or is it you thinking in words / having an inner monologue (dialogue?)

it’s kind of like a memory of what you think your voice sounds like, definitely more like a monologue

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

#106

Post by bengale »

haxiomic wrote: post #51
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?

I've heard skilled artists can have aphantasia and my friend who has it gets very vivid dreams interestingly Do you find you're quicker to read and process things than others seem to be? Music definitely, it's been stronger at some points in my life, I can't do so easily these days but at one point I could hear and improvise music so clear it felt like everyone else would hear it too if you put an audio jack in my ea…

Yeah can be quicker to read and comprehend. I also find I’m quite good at abstract thinking which from what I’ve read is fairly common for people with aphantasia.

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

#107

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

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

#108

Post by bengale »

floatingatoll wrote: post #27
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?

Yes, yes it is. Is your train of thought in the same order as the spoken/written words that it converts to?

Sometimes but not always. I find that it is when I need to “convert” it into a set of steps or communicate it to someone else.

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

#109

Post by pseudalopex »

psyc wrote: post #85
hanoz wrote: post #71

As with perennial Hacker News favourite Aphantasia, the discussion does leave me with the distint impression that the spectrum of reported condition is more a function of our inability to convey and compare the inner experience, than of variation in the inner experience itself.

When others say they can see images and movies in their heads, and hear voices and play back songs in their heads, I believe I know exactly what they mean. Just as if they were describing itching or feeling cold. Yet some people respond with “You can see pictures? You can hear voices? WAT?? I see nothing and hear nothing!” I don’t see how those people could be having the common experience and still be so shocked to h…

Some people in the middle think people who describe stronger sensations just exaggerate. And people who describe weaker sensations are just confused by the exaggerations.

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

#110

Post by checkyoursudo »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #89
checkyoursudo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I close my eyes, I can see nothing. If I keep my eyes open, I can sort of barely super-impose some ghostly relief of the thing I am supposedly imagining. My wife can see like full Technicolor motion pictures in her mind with special effects and superstar cameos. I am jealous. My mind is seriously black when I close my eyes. On the plus side for me, it is super easy for me to fall asleep whenever I want, because it…

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 each room, so I can add them up; in past houses I have counted them before and can simply recall that information). If I had not at some point paid attention to the number of windows in a room, and then left that room, I am not sure I could accurately tell you how many windows were there, because I cannot recreate it in my mind in a visual way. I think I would have to make a mental note first. However, I think I do actually do this unconsciously throughout the waking day. I can certainly remember things from during the day.

I think that I can know the number of windows in each room even though I cannot picture them in the same way that I can recognize anything that I have encoded in memory before. The information is there for both of us, encoded in synapses like usual.

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. The difference is that I cannot recall into a visual simulation that encoded information in the way that you can. So, I think the information is there for both of us. You can just do something with it that I cannot. Maybe. Anyway, memory encoding is not where my research is, so don't quote me. :)

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