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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

#91

Post by towb »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #81

There’s a lack of this inner thought which is an actual condition people have, but I’ve discussed with people before who thought they lacked it… and really it was a misunderstanding based on how it’s described. I have an inner voice and can picture things… but it’s important to note this is “mind’s eye” stuff… it’s not literally equivalent to seeing or hearing something. When I picture something in my mind and close…

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)_/¯

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

#92

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

dmitrygr wrote: post #50
kzrdude wrote: 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

Not a good example, IMO. A triangle is defined as 3 points with 3 lines connecting each consecutive point. A better example would be: think of Tony the Tiger, now what colors are his skin, stripes, and bandana? But that's also not perfect because people are along a spectrum in the amount of detail they're able to see.

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

#93

Post by pseudalopex »

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…

VVIQ[1] is a common test.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vividness_of_Visual_Imagery_Qu...

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

#94

Post by gumby »

Like some other commentators, I have no “inner voice” and the idea of it seems bizarre, and seems like it would be super annoying! When doing mathematics or programming there’s just a conceptual structure that I manipulate or think about, and then type in some code that corresponds to it.

When I read a book the characters do feel realistic to me and I do sometimes see (in a patchy way I suppose) scenes. But when reading, the words have no sounds, they just go straight from the page into my brain. Written puns and poetry don’t really work for me.

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

#95

Post by ManuelKiessling »

ars wrote: post #55
boc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? For me it's easy to "fly" around my neighborhood just by closing my eyes and remembering what the streets and trees and houses look like as I take a lap. I can see off into the distance, I can see the sidewalk cracks, I can see people... all of them are obviously fuzzed versions of reality but nonetheless they're rela…

> So wait, if you close your eyes and picture Mount Everest, you can't see Mount Everest in your head? I can picture the concept of Mount Everest. But it's more of an abstract idea. Like I don't actually see a mountain in color as if it were in front of me. But there's this "mental concept" sitting in front of me. Are you able to actually "see" a picture? Are most people able to do that? I've never noticed a limitati…

What was the last movie you saw? Do you remember any specific color from this movie, like, idk, the color of the car the hero drove or something like that? If you didn‘t make a mental note of that color while watching the movie, then how would you re-call that information now, without visualizing it in your mind? Can you give us an idea?

For example, what is the color of the laser beam of the death star? Do you „see“ the colored beam in your mind? I do, and it‘s the only mental mechanism I have to answer that question. Without that, I would have to look it up via Google Image Search or whatever, make a mental note of the specific answer, and would have to recall the answer instead of recalling the image, I guess…?

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

#96

Post by floatingatoll »

titusjohnson wrote: post #84
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I trace a spiral from the center counter clockwise, and if I still don’t have comprehension, I go back a couple paragraphs or try again the agonizing word by word way Wow. What?

My experience on reading isn't as dramatic as the person you're replying to, but similar. I read whole paragraphs and/or sentences in one go. I don't really know "how" I do it, and there are limits (it really, really helps to know the author and their writing style). My eyes hit the paragraph, flick to see the end of it, traverse back up half-scanning each line, then I scan through the lines from the top, and afterwa…

Yep, basically like this. I can’t repeat anything I read verbatim, but I can remember a sentence someone said and quote it back to them easily when context requires it.

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

#97

Post by id »

towb wrote: post #91
micromacrofoot wrote: post #81

There’s a lack of this inner thought which is an actual condition people have, but I’ve discussed with people before who thought they lacked it… and really it was a misunderstanding based on how it’s described. I have an inner voice and can picture things… but it’s important to note this is “mind’s eye” stuff… it’s not literally equivalent to seeing or hearing something. When I picture something in my mind and close…

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?)

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

#98

Post by floatingatoll »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #53
floatingatoll wrote: post #2

Hey, it’s me! I’m one of the “inner silence” folks, in case anyone has questions. Didn’t realize y’all heard voices until five years ago.

When you hear a song that you know and like, does the music and singing repeat in your head after the song is over?

So much yes. I can find the beat and hum along with it usually in the first ten or twenty seconds. I can remember songs from a single opening note. Apparently I have excellent pitch.

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

#99

Post by darrenf »

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?

Yep, and pretty much constantly. Mostly my own, but if I think about someone else speaking - like, say, recalling a conversation or even something from TV/film/radio - then I hear the voice of the original speaker.

My own voice, especially during a period of mental ill-health, gets so fast and/or loud that it can drown out everything else. I've been to gigs while depressed and literally "not heard" entire songs because I was too busy inside.

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

Can't speak for "all", but definitely for me. Music comes and goes throughout the day; if I choose (or otherwise have cause) to think of a song, I can hear it clear as day. I can be rickrolled just by seeing a line from the song.

Visually I am considerably more blank, however. I can recall things like walking/driving routes, views/vistas, the order of shops on a street, the layout of an airport terminal, etc etc - but I can't legitimately claim to be able to see these things in my mind's eye. They're just somehow there. But it's only a past tense thing - I can't do any active visual thinking about things that don't exist. Ask me to think of an apple and I'll recall one, not conjure one up. But ask me to imagine what a room would look like painted a different colour and I absolutely cannot - even with a swatch of paint already on one wall.

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

#100

Post by micromacrofoot »

towb wrote: post #91
micromacrofoot wrote: post #81

There’s a lack of this inner thought which is an actual condition people have, but I’ve discussed with people before who thought they lacked it… and really it was a misunderstanding based on how it’s described. I have an inner voice and can picture things… but it’s important to note this is “mind’s eye” stuff… it’s not literally equivalent to seeing or hearing something. When I picture something in my mind and close…

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)_/¯

yes, “less than a picture but more than words” seems like a good way to put it!
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