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As someone who normally doesn't have the self-talk module running, I was amazed to learn that most people have it running all the time. I only use the module wh

As someone who normally doesn't have the self-talk module running, I was amazed to learn that most people have it running all the time. I only use the module when writing, otherwise my consciousness is normally non-verbal. I suspect it is related, but when I read I don't hear the words unless I deliberately choose to read the text in my head, otherwise my process is written word -> concept.

cimmanom 8y ago
Interesting. I hear words when reading but not when thinking -- unless specifically walking myself through an impending dialog or how to compose a written communication.
mirimir 8y ago
Cool. I've learned to minimize self-talk. And yes, it helps for writing. But during crises, it's there loud and clear. I used to think that it was what I wanted. And that sometimes didn't turn out so well :( For reading, it depends on the genre, how well I know the topics, and complexity. I don't hear words in reading fiction. I just experience thoughts, feelings and action. If I'm confused, I need to reread and parse. And English isn't my mother tongue, so sometimes I need to diagram stuff. But if it's familiar stuff, it's words -> concepts.
Lambdanaut 8y ago
Even further-leaning on that spectrum, I have an acquaintance with complete Aphantasia. He lives life with a complete inability to experience anything that is not happening at that moment. He cannot picture his mother's face. He can't recall his life. He can't get a song stuck in his head. He can't hear any words in his head at all. And yet he's an incredibly talented musician, writer, and teacher. When he sits at his piano, the music just happens. He can only compose while working at the instrument.
- kszxgz 8y ago
  "He cannot picture his mother's face." How common is the ability to picture people's faces in their heads? Is it more close to 60%, 90% or 99% of the population? I'm asking because I also don't have that ability. I think I lose the ability to picture people's faces a couple of seconds after seeing them, while preserving the ability to recognize them if I have seen them often enough. "He can't recall his life." What type of recall are you referring to? May I assume that factual recall is still present while visual, auditory and emotional recall is inactive?
  - slx26 8y ago
    I think it's curious how it's so common to have a hard time picturing someone's face in your mind actively, but we can still easily "picture" them in dreams. Like, we have trouble when trying to accurately recreate an specific image from known data, but it's easy to recall scenes from memories. Which at the same time are so easy to misremember! I feel like I'm really bad at mentally creating still images, but can be easily fooled by mental scenes with movement. Should report as a bug in the issue tracker.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I can reproduce this. You'll get +1 from me on that bug report.
  - Lambdanaut 8y ago
    > What type of recall are you referring to? He can tell you a story about his life, but he can't think about his life. If he's not actively hearing the words of his life story come out of his mouth, he can't think about it.
  - hangtwenty 8y ago
    Some people call this “face blindness,” I knew somebody who identified as face-blind and he explained it caused a lot of social difficulty for him. Mentioning mostly in case you haven’t heard the term, I guess sharing this info can help so they don’t take it personally.
    - kszxgz 8y ago
      Isn't face blindness the inability to recognize people? What about the case where you recognize people but you can picture no human face in your head?
      - hangtwenty 8y ago
        Oh, I see, I misunderstood. Thank you for clarifying. That's very interesting! I wonder if these experiences would be have common brain pathways
topmonk 8y ago
You might be interested in this (start on page 6): https://www.scribd.com/document/326903960/Feynman-Thinking https://www.scribd.com/document/326903960/Feynman-Thinking According to Feyman's experiment, above, it turns out there are at least two kinds of people, those that can read while counting in their head, and those that can speak. I always wondered why empirically derived differences in people, such as the above, was never used much in other studies. It seems that it would be a lot more interesting data point than the typical self-evaluation questionnaire that most psychology studies seem to use.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  The reason why it is so little studied is it is very hard (near impossible) to get funding to study the difference between people unless these differences cause a problem to the person. No professional scientist can afford to work on questions that can't get funding so whole areas of really interesting research are neglected.
- vinc 8y ago
  Thanks for the PDF. Here's direct link from another website: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf
TeMPOraL 8y ago
It seems to be similar with mental pictures. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... "The debate [over mental imagery] was resolved by Francis Galton (...). Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images." Personally, I'm someone with small-talk module running almost constantly, verbalizing most of my thinking and reading. On the other hand, I have very low capability of forming mental images. I wonder how many other things in brain are like that, widely differing between people.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  I suspect that there is quite a large variation between people, but it has not really been studied because it is almost impossible to get funding to study differences that don't cause a problem to an individual. It is a shame because I find this topic fascinating. I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in from our Neanderthal ancestors. We know they had a brain more specialised around visual processing, but very little beyond this. It is almost certain that some people today think in a similar way to Neanderthals given how much of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the human population, but who they are and what they think like is unknown.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    I wonder instead if it comes from early development, like having a preponderance of picture vs written books as a toddler and at what point of development getting read stories has an influence if any
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      It is possible, but I suspect that any difference is formed earlier than this. I know I thought the way I think long before I learned to read. I remember very clearly learning about the concept of the written word. Once it clicked suddenly I noticed the whole world was filled with words (not that I knew what most of them meant). The world was now very different to how I saw it before and I became fascinated with knowing what they all were (I used to drive my mother crazy asking her what every sign said). I am also not sure if this is also related, but I was apparently quite a late talker (around 24 months), but once I started talking I was far ahead of other children of my age.
Baeocystin 8y ago
I remember having conversations with people when I was younger talking about what language you think in. I found the question confusing, as I just...don't. Words only come in to play when I'm communicating with someone else, like writing this post. Otherwise it is concepts or images. When discussing this to the others, I have consistently gotten either completely baffled expressions as a reply, or people know exactly what I am talking about, and are equally surprised that it is even something worth mentioning. What surprises me most out of all of this is how little this seemingly very different cognitive approach appears to affect our day-to-day ability to communicate with one another.

cimmanom 8y ago

Interesting. I hear words when reading but not when thinking -- unless specifically walking myself through an impending dialog or how to compose a written communication.

mirimir 8y ago

Cool. I've learned to minimize self-talk. And yes, it helps for writing. But during crises, it's there loud and clear. I used to think that it was what I wanted. And that sometimes didn't turn out so well :( For reading, it depends on the genre, how well I know the topics, and complexity. I don't hear words in reading fiction. I just experience thoughts, feelings and action. If I'm confused, I need to reread and parse. And English isn't my mother tongue, so sometimes I need to diagram stuff. But if it's familiar stuff, it's words -> concepts.

Lambdanaut 8y ago

Even further-leaning on that spectrum, I have an acquaintance with complete Aphantasia. He lives life with a complete inability to experience anything that is not happening at that moment. He cannot picture his mother's face. He can't recall his life. He can't get a song stuck in his head. He can't hear any words in his head at all. And yet he's an incredibly talented musician, writer, and teacher. When he sits at his piano, the music just happens. He can only compose while working at the instrument.

kszxgz 8y ago
"He cannot picture his mother's face." How common is the ability to picture people's faces in their heads? Is it more close to 60%, 90% or 99% of the population? I'm asking because I also don't have that ability. I think I lose the ability to picture people's faces a couple of seconds after seeing them, while preserving the ability to recognize them if I have seen them often enough. "He can't recall his life." What type of recall are you referring to? May I assume that factual recall is still present while visual, auditory and emotional recall is inactive?
- slx26 8y ago
  I think it's curious how it's so common to have a hard time picturing someone's face in your mind actively, but we can still easily "picture" them in dreams. Like, we have trouble when trying to accurately recreate an specific image from known data, but it's easy to recall scenes from memories. Which at the same time are so easy to misremember! I feel like I'm really bad at mentally creating still images, but can be easily fooled by mental scenes with movement. Should report as a bug in the issue tracker.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I can reproduce this. You'll get +1 from me on that bug report.
- Lambdanaut 8y ago
  > What type of recall are you referring to? He can tell you a story about his life, but he can't think about his life. If he's not actively hearing the words of his life story come out of his mouth, he can't think about it.
- hangtwenty 8y ago
  Some people call this “face blindness,” I knew somebody who identified as face-blind and he explained it caused a lot of social difficulty for him. Mentioning mostly in case you haven’t heard the term, I guess sharing this info can help so they don’t take it personally.
  - kszxgz 8y ago
    Isn't face blindness the inability to recognize people? What about the case where you recognize people but you can picture no human face in your head?
    - hangtwenty 8y ago
      Oh, I see, I misunderstood. Thank you for clarifying. That's very interesting! I wonder if these experiences would be have common brain pathways

topmonk 8y ago

You might be interested in this (start on page 6): https://www.scribd.com/document/326903960/Feynman-Thinking https://www.scribd.com/document/326903960/Feynman-Thinking According to Feyman's experiment, above, it turns out there are at least two kinds of people, those that can read while counting in their head, and those that can speak. I always wondered why empirically derived differences in people, such as the above, was never used much in other studies. It seems that it would be a lot more interesting data point than the typical self-evaluation questionnaire that most psychology studies seem to use.

danieltillett 8y ago
The reason why it is so little studied is it is very hard (near impossible) to get funding to study the difference between people unless these differences cause a problem to the person. No professional scientist can afford to work on questions that can't get funding so whole areas of really interesting research are neglected.
vinc 8y ago
Thanks for the PDF. Here's direct link from another website: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/607/2/Feynman.pdf

TeMPOraL 8y ago

It seems to be similar with mental pictures. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... "The debate [over mental imagery] was resolved by Francis Galton (...). Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images." Personally, I'm someone with small-talk module running almost constantly, verbalizing most of my thinking and reading. On the other hand, I have very low capability of forming mental images. I wonder how many other things in brain are like that, widely differing between people.

danieltillett 8y ago
I suspect that there is quite a large variation between people, but it has not really been studied because it is almost impossible to get funding to study differences that don't cause a problem to an individual. It is a shame because I find this topic fascinating. I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in from our Neanderthal ancestors. We know they had a brain more specialised around visual processing, but very little beyond this. It is almost certain that some people today think in a similar way to Neanderthals given how much of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the human population, but who they are and what they think like is unknown.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  I wonder instead if it comes from early development, like having a preponderance of picture vs written books as a toddler and at what point of development getting read stories has an influence if any
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    It is possible, but I suspect that any difference is formed earlier than this. I know I thought the way I think long before I learned to read. I remember very clearly learning about the concept of the written word. Once it clicked suddenly I noticed the whole world was filled with words (not that I knew what most of them meant). The world was now very different to how I saw it before and I became fascinated with knowing what they all were (I used to drive my mother crazy asking her what every sign said). I am also not sure if this is also related, but I was apparently quite a late talker (around 24 months), but once I started talking I was far ahead of other children of my age.

Baeocystin 8y ago

I remember having conversations with people when I was younger talking about what language you think in. I found the question confusing, as I just...don't. Words only come in to play when I'm communicating with someone else, like writing this post. Otherwise it is concepts or images. When discussing this to the others, I have consistently gotten either completely baffled expressions as a reply, or people know exactly what I am talking about, and are equally surprised that it is even something worth mentioning. What surprises me most out of all of this is how little this seemingly very different cognitive approach appears to affect our day-to-day ability to communicate with one another.