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 r

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/