3 ms·

Wait... Some people can't turn them off? Some people don't have them at all? I've always been able to think without voices in my head, or deliberately use th

Wait... Some people can't turn them off? Some people don't have them at all? I've always been able to think without voices in my head, or deliberately use them to focus my thoughts. I never even considered that others might be stuck in one mode or the other.

lostcolony 10y ago
Yeah. This is really interesting to think about. I can talk with myself in my head, when I'm internally debating something (having one perspective question another, then another question the questioner, etc, a kind of 'second thoughts' per Pratchett), or I can sort of...play out a script in my head, like a monologue, when I want to 'hear' how something will come across before saying it, or when writing (such as now), to try and sound it out, and I can think in non-verbal ways, where there's no voice, where I'm examining and abstracting and constructing patterns and etc, things that are innately non-verbal...but I never actually thought about those as being distinct methods of ~thinking~, and that some people might not be able to do it.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
I can't think without vocalizing, and I can't control when thoughts flow in/out of my head (well I've been practicing, but I'm nowhere near there), so I can't really control my inner voice. They're so tied together for me, I can't really understand the idea of thinking without it, or even that the "thought" and "voice" are separate things. For example, when reading, I need to vocalize everything, and I'm sure this contributes to me being a slow reader. I've tried speed reading techniques, or learning to read words in groups, and I can take in the words, but don't actually "process" them. By the time I've read the next sentence, I've forgotten what the previous one said. I can read much faster than I could physically talk (maybe 2-3x), but any faster than that and my inner-voice jumbles together, I can no longer comprehend it. With speed reading tools that show you one word at a time very quickly, like Spritz [0], I can get over 600wpm and still read every word, but my inner voice sounds like one of those robotic voices that combine recorded samples together (like a subway announcement: "The next. BROOKLYN BOUND. train will. ARRIVE IN... TWO. minutes."). And I've found that anything above 200wpm, I couldn't tell you 5 minutes later what I had read. [0] http://spritzinc.com/ http://spritzinc.com/ Edit: There's a fun story by Richard Feynman about him and a friend trying to count in their heads while reading or speaking aloud. And Feynman found he could read and count, but not speak and count, and his friend was the opposite. It turns out it was because Feynman was verbalizing the counting, while his friend was visualizing it. Couldn't find a link that wasn't a PDF filled with illustrations, but it's a short read. http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3591/ http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3591/
NoGravitas 10y ago
I can't turn off my internal voice at all, except in meditation, and even then it's difficult. I have to spend quite a lot of time where my internal voice is doing nothing but counting breaths, before eventually/sometimes, I can just observe the breaths without counting them. Otherwise, I have a continuous monologue, mostly in my own voice. I can think in images, but the images are never completely without narration.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  This is soooo much me, except that I've never had it during meditation. This actually caused me some problems trying to learn to meditate - I can't grasp focusing on something if I can't have the internal vocalisation with it. I finally settled on making inner sounds along with monotonous drumming - the vocalisation will kinda tune out or get quieter, at least. Thanks for describing it for me, btw :) I have that monologue as well - complete along with your description of images. If I narrate them, they are much better.

lostcolony 10y ago

Yeah. This is really interesting to think about. I can talk with myself in my head, when I'm internally debating something (having one perspective question another, then another question the questioner, etc, a kind of 'second thoughts' per Pratchett), or I can sort of...play out a script in my head, like a monologue, when I want to 'hear' how something will come across before saying it, or when writing (such as now), to try and sound it out, and I can think in non-verbal ways, where there's no voice, where I'm examining and abstracting and constructing patterns and etc, things that are innately non-verbal...but I never actually thought about those as being distinct methods of ~thinking~, and that some people might not be able to do it.

squeaky-clean 10y ago

I can't think without vocalizing, and I can't control when thoughts flow in/out of my head (well I've been practicing, but I'm nowhere near there), so I can't really control my inner voice. They're so tied together for me, I can't really understand the idea of thinking without it, or even that the "thought" and "voice" are separate things. For example, when reading, I need to vocalize everything, and I'm sure this contributes to me being a slow reader. I've tried speed reading techniques, or learning to read words in groups, and I can take in the words, but don't actually "process" them. By the time I've read the next sentence, I've forgotten what the previous one said. I can read much faster than I could physically talk (maybe 2-3x), but any faster than that and my inner-voice jumbles together, I can no longer comprehend it. With speed reading tools that show you one word at a time very quickly, like Spritz [0], I can get over 600wpm and still read every word, but my inner voice sounds like one of those robotic voices that combine recorded samples together (like a subway announcement: "The next. BROOKLYN BOUND. train will. ARRIVE IN... TWO. minutes."). And I've found that anything above 200wpm, I couldn't tell you 5 minutes later what I had read. [0] http://spritzinc.com/ http://spritzinc.com/ Edit: There's a fun story by Richard Feynman about him and a friend trying to count in their heads while reading or speaking aloud. And Feynman found he could read and count, but not speak and count, and his friend was the opposite. It turns out it was because Feynman was verbalizing the counting, while his friend was visualizing it. Couldn't find a link that wasn't a PDF filled with illustrations, but it's a short read. http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3591/ http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3591/

NoGravitas 10y ago

I can't turn off my internal voice at all, except in meditation, and even then it's difficult. I have to spend quite a lot of time where my internal voice is doing nothing but counting breaths, before eventually/sometimes, I can just observe the breaths without counting them. Otherwise, I have a continuous monologue, mostly in my own voice. I can think in images, but the images are never completely without narration.

Broken_Hippo 10y ago
This is soooo much me, except that I've never had it during meditation. This actually caused me some problems trying to learn to meditate - I can't grasp focusing on something if I can't have the internal vocalisation with it. I finally settled on making inner sounds along with monotonous drumming - the vocalisation will kinda tune out or get quieter, at least. Thanks for describing it for me, btw :) I have that monologue as well - complete along with your description of images. If I narrate them, they are much better.