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Not everyone has an internal monologue

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Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#51

Post by JasonFruit »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.

Most well-trained musicians can read a score and construct the sounds mentally. It's an essential skill for composers and conductors, and useful for others.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#52

Post by vekker »

What does the author mean with "hearing his voice" though? People can have different interpretations of what it means to "hear".

In what sense can it be compared with hearing actual sounds? Does it have the same quality. Does he perceive his mental dialogue like an overlay on top of "external" sound?

I've been wondering the same thing when people say they "see" or "visualize" something: do they actually, visually see it in front of them, or not?

For me, the internal monologue and visualization are all just "mental" events. It doesn't share any qualities with the other sensory faculties: they are all quite distinct for me. Just like seeing and hearing, mental events also have a "spectrum", ranging from nothing at all (no thought), to "quiet" (abstract thinking and forming mental facsimiles of sensory perception) to "loud" (mentally "speaking" full sentences to myself, which I do the least).

Fascinating topic!

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#53

Post by phn »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.

I use this as a way to easily drown out other thoughts by focusing on the "mind radio".

I should add that I find myself with a song stuck in my head all the time as well.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#54

Post by agarden »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.

I cannot do this at all. Wish I could.

But have you heard of Bob Milne? He can listen to four different symphonies in his head at the same time: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/14867...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#55

Post by munificent »

enobrev wrote: post #45
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.

I do the same, but unintentionally and the songs that seem to pop into my head are all songs I hate. It's incredibly rare that my favorites end up playing, but rather repetitive Pop crap. This isn't even a comment about Pop Music, as even though I don't really listen to Pop, I've heard plenty that I like. But not the songs that fly around in my head all day; Pure garbage. Edit: As I was typing this, "La Macarena" pop…

I specifically avoid viral earworm songs because I am very prone to getting them stuck in my head. I can have the same song playing "in the background" non-stop in my mind for days. I have songs in my dreams and I'll wake up with them still playing in my head. Sometimes it will just be a single bar of a song, or just a piece of it looping.

To this day, I have never once listened to "Chocolate Rain" or Rebecca Black's "Friday" because I fear never being able to turn them off. (I avoided Taylor Swift for, like a decade, but now just thinking about means I've got "Shake it Off" playing.)

Writing this out now makes me realize how weird this all sounds...

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#56

Post by UnFleshedOne »

TacticalTable wrote: post #19
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #8

Interesting. I've been actively suppressing verbalization whenever it comes up as far as I can remember -- it is annoying af, as annoying as those silly tunes that get stuck in your head. Not sure if that actually affected amount of internal monologue I do have, but I definitely don't have it on all the time. Mostly when rehearsing an actual past or expected conversation.

Do you have any tricks on suppressing verbalization? I've found that it feels really wasteful when I realize that half my thoughts are just acting as a translator for the abstract side, instead of keeping it abstract until I get to something I need to verbalize.

I sometimes do a mini meditation, quietly ignore the stream and it goes away. Or sometimes I try the opposite, forcefully suppress it.

I find that both have kinda the same effect -- all useful thought process get interrupted, including the abstract part.. :/

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#57

Post by godshatter »

LukeBMM wrote: post #31

A similar subjective experience just came up recently[1] on HN as an aside in an article posted about Derek Parfitt: > He attributes [his severely deficient autobiographical memory] to his inability to form mental images. Although he recognizes familiar things when he sees them, he cannot call up images of them afterward in his head: he cannot visualize even so simple an image as a flag; he cannot, when he is away, r…

I don't know enough about SDAM to know if it's the same thing as visual aphantasia, but they are presumably related. I am unable to visualize anyone's face (or, really, anything at all that isn't a black void), yet I can easily recognize the person (especially if I know them well) and I can describe them. What I can describe about them are whatever notes I've made about them to myself along the way (round face, black hair, mustache, broad chin, etc).

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#58

Post by underbluewaters »

LukeBMM wrote: post #31

A similar subjective experience just came up recently[1] on HN as an aside in an article posted about Derek Parfitt: > He attributes [his severely deficient autobiographical memory] to his inability to form mental images. Although he recognizes familiar things when he sees them, he cannot call up images of them afterward in his head: he cannot visualize even so simple an image as a flag; he cannot, when he is away, r…

I had a surprising conversation with a talented artist a while back and while we were discussing methods it came up that they always had to work from a model or photograph because they could not recall images, at all, from memory.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#59

Post by vonseel »

baddox wrote: post #28

I saw this viral tweet and I hoped that was more scientific information to read, because I'm a little confused. I don't see enough information here to even determine which type of person I am. Of course I've always heard of "internal monologue" and of course I think about things using language. But I also don't "hear" anything, and definitely not something that literally sounds like my voice speaking. But if I were t…

Hmmm

It is indeed an intriguing topic to consider. I hear something like my own voice both when I am thinking throughout the day and when I am writing, such as right now I hear my “imaginary voice” speaking what I’m typing out.

The idea of ones own voice is hard to describe. I perceive it as similar to what my voice sounds like, but from heard from within, almost like you’ve rolled off a bunch of the high-end. Imaginary voice is much more consistent in volume and tone for me too than speaking, much less emotional, almost no variety in pitch.

I wouldn’t say I think in full-sentence monologues all day, but I guess I think in fragments of sentences? It’s one of those things that is hard to look back and remember doing and explain how you did it, kind of like breathing. It’s just automatic.

I wonder if some of the “no monologue” people aren’t much different from the rest of us, but they just didn’t articulate their process the same way. I can kind of identify with the concept map thing, so I could probably answer differently depending on mood or how I felt when I read the survey.

Re: Not everyone has an internal monologue

#60

Post by [deleted] »

deadlyllama wrote: post #48
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

Something I discovered within the past year is that if I know a song fairly well, I can "play it" silently in my head, and be entertained. The experience isn't quite as emotionally resonate as listening with headphones, but it's not so far off either. It's useful when I'm bored. ...can anyone else do this? I actually find it supremely weird.

Yup, have been able to do that as long as I remember. It's great for pub quizzes where they play the start of a song, I listen to the rest in my head until I've worked out the song's name. Isn't this the experience of getting a song "stuck in your head?"

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