3 ms·

There is also "mind's ear". Most people have it but some don't. Most people imagine voices in their head. When reading, writing, or imagining a conversation,

There is also "mind's ear". Most people have it but some don't. Most people imagine voices in their head. When reading, writing, or imagining a conversation, especially an argument, or preparing for a meeting. When I'm reading, or writing, including coding, I hear the words in my head. The speech doesn't sound like real sound, just like visualising doesn't look like real images. (Dreams are different - they can sound real, and I've heard some amazing music in my dreams.) I have friend who doesn't hear anything in her "mind's ear", and had no idea until recently that other people do. After someone admitted to hearing imaginary voices (me), after asking other people she was astonished to find this is normal and she's unusual. Nearly everyone has an internal voice. This freaked her out as she wondered if other people experienced auditory "voices in your head telling you what to do" style hallucinations, and wondered if they sound like real voices (they don't, but there is some resemblance). She simply had no conscious experience of a mind's ear with speech. I can't imagine what it's like without one. Most of my thinking has imaginary speech going on, including when I'm coding or reading. I also have a friend who _stopped_ having the mind's ear speech after a stroke. She said she'd been trying for years to quieten the internal dialogue through meditation, and then after the stroke she finally experienced it.

Tor3 8y ago
I read a lot, fiction mostly, but I don't hear an inner voice when reading speech (and I don't hear a voice from the narrator if the books is written like a narrative). I could do that, if I wished to apply a voice to it, e.g. imagine that some friend said those words. I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to actually 'listen' to a voice when reading I imagine the reading would get terribly slow. Since I was a child I've always been able to read much much faster than any kind of speech or audio narrative. In elementary school I used to drop by the library every day, borrow up to four books, read them, get new books the next day. An inner voice would be like slow motion, it would take forever to read a book. (And I was surprised when book commentors complained about e.g. names in a story that are difficult to pronounce. Until I understood that their inner voice is actually trying to pronounce it - which breaks up their reading.)
- jlokier 8y ago
  I read quickly, sometimes extremely quickly (I can spot things in a terminal window scrolling at high speed - I know some people who can't do that), and find the inner voice doesn't slow down my reading at all. Like what someone wrote about visualising barns, it's not like a real voice. Even though it's faster than real speech, it doesn't sound rapid in the same way as Youtube at 2x. And if I skip my eyes around a large block of text, it seamlessly picks up the words in each location instantly. So I don't think the reading happens by internal listening. I think the reading is visual, and the internal speech is more like an output of the reading process, giving an auditory feel (and a bit of an accent) to the words.
  - Tor3 8y ago
    Thanks. That's interesting. I suspect that this works differently for different people though, just like the comments have shown how differently the visual imaginery works for people. Because I have heard people explain that they really hear that inner voice, a distinct one that could as well be (and sometimes is) of a person they know.

Tor3 8y ago

I read a lot, fiction mostly, but I don't hear an inner voice when reading speech (and I don't hear a voice from the narrator if the books is written like a narrative). I could do that, if I wished to apply a voice to it, e.g. imagine that some friend said those words. I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had to actually 'listen' to a voice when reading I imagine the reading would get terribly slow. Since I was a child I've always been able to read much much faster than any kind of speech or audio narrative. In elementary school I used to drop by the library every day, borrow up to four books, read them, get new books the next day. An inner voice would be like slow motion, it would take forever to read a book. (And I was surprised when book commentors complained about e.g. names in a story that are difficult to pronounce. Until I understood that their inner voice is actually trying to pronounce it - which breaks up their reading.)

jlokier 8y ago
I read quickly, sometimes extremely quickly (I can spot things in a terminal window scrolling at high speed - I know some people who can't do that), and find the inner voice doesn't slow down my reading at all. Like what someone wrote about visualising barns, it's not like a real voice. Even though it's faster than real speech, it doesn't sound rapid in the same way as Youtube at 2x. And if I skip my eyes around a large block of text, it seamlessly picks up the words in each location instantly. So I don't think the reading happens by internal listening. I think the reading is visual, and the internal speech is more like an output of the reading process, giving an auditory feel (and a bit of an accent) to the words.
- Tor3 8y ago
  Thanks. That's interesting. I suspect that this works differently for different people though, just like the comments have shown how differently the visual imaginery works for people. Because I have heard people explain that they really hear that inner voice, a distinct one that could as well be (and sometimes is) of a person they know.