7 ms·

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in y

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?

pama 3y ago
To people who have trouble with this concept I suggest the analogy to reading without voicing out words yet still internalizing the concepts, and often at a much faster rate than when vocalizing during reading (which in turn can be pleasant for some poetry). It is possible to read multiple lines in parallel and the mechanism is similar to sight reading piano music when you have two (or occasionally three) lines of information that immediately translate to actions in your arms, hands, and fingers. In a related sense, sight reading music does not involve any inner voice or chatter yet a lot of conscious decisions are being made and a lot of hard non-verbal thinking goes into optimizing technique. Human language is just too inefficient for most high performance thinking but it is the best tool we currently have for storing and transmitting thoughts.
riversflow 3y ago
> how are you able to speak? How are you able to walk? You don’t think about every muscle contraction. Speaking, writing, drawing and walking are all about the same to me. (I also have no inner voice and aphantasia)
- jimkleiber 3y ago
  I have a lots of questions, as I find it hard for me to imagine: 1) When you read, do you ever say the words in your head or is it always more like an automatic recognition of the characters without voicing them? 2) Can you force yourself to have an inner voice, aka forcing yourself to say something like "I am thinking to myself right now"? Also, it's ok if you don't want to answer but I'd be curious to learn more about your experience.
  - razerbeans 3y ago
    I'll answer from my own experience (with no inner voice): 1) I have to be very explicit when reading with an inner voice (which goes to your second point). Generally, it is a kind of recognition that a word has a meaning and I "feel" that meaning, if that makes sense? 2) Yes. It feels unnatural though.
    - jancsika 3y ago
      But then how do you do what I'd consider simple things like sanity checks? For example, hooking up jumper cables. I suppose I could hook them up without an inner dialog. But then at any point if I get confused or remember that dangerous things can happen, I can go back and compare against a list in my head of the steps to hook them up. E.g., don't let clamps touch, start with the dead battery, positive first, crank and rev the working car, etc. How can you get the same type of sanity check without an inner dialog? Do you memorize an ordered sequence of "feels" that correspond to the steps?
      - razerbeans 3y ago
        You know, I've never really thought about it. Yeah, I guess I do just remember the feeling and know that it's a step that I've completed. And when I recall the steps that need to be done, it's not really a cohesive spoken thought. It's like impulses of sensations? My brain is just like "Order's important. Red red, black black." without the words. For really difficult mental tasks, I'll actually talk to myself or write things down so that they are less chaotic since the feelings/impulses in my brain may not line up. Kind of like a buffer filling up. Now what really bothers my wife is when we talk about how we have conversations with others. I don't necessarily think about what I'm going to say verbatim when I'm talking to someone. It's impulses like I mention above where things kind of "flash" into my brain the moment before I say it. The best way that I can think of it is that it's similar to playing a sport where you have moments to change your trajectory and movement to accomplish what you want. I know thematically what I want to say, but I don't actually build the sentence in my brain. Hope that helps!
eikenberry 3y ago
> Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself? For me, yes... when I'm thinking about words (spoken or written) I think in those words but otherwise not.
z5h 3y ago
Do you need an inner-inner voice before your inner voice speaks? To figure out what your inner voice will say before it says it?
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  I find if I listen closely to my inner voice, it starts going in a circle for exactly this reason. This makes me think maybe the actual order is backwards and the voice comes second, but it feels first because brains are weird.
  - z5h 3y ago
    Right, my point is there is some point at which our "generation" of dialogue transitions from subconscious to conscious. This is true for people with or without inner dialogs.
    - earthboundkid 3y ago
      Agreed. I don't need to be convinced because I definitely do some language related tasks without using my normal, chatty inner monologue. For example, when I try to speak Japanese via an English inner monologue, it's extremely slow. To be fluent I need to just go straight to Japanese, preferably without thinking at all.
wharvle 3y ago
I dunno how it worked, but I went much of my childhood without an inner voice. Didn’t seem to hinder me at all. One day I played around with imagining my thoughts as a voice in my head. Kept it up for a few more days. When I tried to stop, found I couldn’t, not entirely. Had one ever since. I still wouldn’t say my inner voice forms my words for speech or much of my writing, even now. If I consider what I might say ahead of time, yes, if I’m just talking, no. And of course if I think about it (as I am now) then it gets more involved in that process.
firecall 3y ago
There is a famously extensive and popular Reddit thread about this! Which I'm sure someone will link to :-)
- SuperHeavy256 3y ago
  can you link to it? I'm interested in reading it.

pama 3y ago

To people who have trouble with this concept I suggest the analogy to reading without voicing out words yet still internalizing the concepts, and often at a much faster rate than when vocalizing during reading (which in turn can be pleasant for some poetry). It is possible to read multiple lines in parallel and the mechanism is similar to sight reading piano music when you have two (or occasionally three) lines of information that immediately translate to actions in your arms, hands, and fingers. In a related sense, sight reading music does not involve any inner voice or chatter yet a lot of conscious decisions are being made and a lot of hard non-verbal thinking goes into optimizing technique. Human language is just too inefficient for most high performance thinking but it is the best tool we currently have for storing and transmitting thoughts.

riversflow 3y ago

> how are you able to speak? How are you able to walk? You don’t think about every muscle contraction. Speaking, writing, drawing and walking are all about the same to me. (I also have no inner voice and aphantasia)

jimkleiber 3y ago
I have a lots of questions, as I find it hard for me to imagine: 1) When you read, do you ever say the words in your head or is it always more like an automatic recognition of the characters without voicing them? 2) Can you force yourself to have an inner voice, aka forcing yourself to say something like "I am thinking to myself right now"? Also, it's ok if you don't want to answer but I'd be curious to learn more about your experience.
- razerbeans 3y ago
  I'll answer from my own experience (with no inner voice): 1) I have to be very explicit when reading with an inner voice (which goes to your second point). Generally, it is a kind of recognition that a word has a meaning and I "feel" that meaning, if that makes sense? 2) Yes. It feels unnatural though.
  - jancsika 3y ago
    But then how do you do what I'd consider simple things like sanity checks? For example, hooking up jumper cables. I suppose I could hook them up without an inner dialog. But then at any point if I get confused or remember that dangerous things can happen, I can go back and compare against a list in my head of the steps to hook them up. E.g., don't let clamps touch, start with the dead battery, positive first, crank and rev the working car, etc. How can you get the same type of sanity check without an inner dialog? Do you memorize an ordered sequence of "feels" that correspond to the steps?
    - razerbeans 3y ago
      You know, I've never really thought about it. Yeah, I guess I do just remember the feeling and know that it's a step that I've completed. And when I recall the steps that need to be done, it's not really a cohesive spoken thought. It's like impulses of sensations? My brain is just like "Order's important. Red red, black black." without the words. For really difficult mental tasks, I'll actually talk to myself or write things down so that they are less chaotic since the feelings/impulses in my brain may not line up. Kind of like a buffer filling up. Now what really bothers my wife is when we talk about how we have conversations with others. I don't necessarily think about what I'm going to say verbatim when I'm talking to someone. It's impulses like I mention above where things kind of "flash" into my brain the moment before I say it. The best way that I can think of it is that it's similar to playing a sport where you have moments to change your trajectory and movement to accomplish what you want. I know thematically what I want to say, but I don't actually build the sentence in my brain. Hope that helps!

eikenberry 3y ago

> Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself? For me, yes... when I'm thinking about words (spoken or written) I think in those words but otherwise not.

z5h 3y ago

Do you need an inner-inner voice before your inner voice speaks? To figure out what your inner voice will say before it says it?

earthboundkid 3y ago
I find if I listen closely to my inner voice, it starts going in a circle for exactly this reason. This makes me think maybe the actual order is backwards and the voice comes second, but it feels first because brains are weird.
- z5h 3y ago
  Right, my point is there is some point at which our "generation" of dialogue transitions from subconscious to conscious. This is true for people with or without inner dialogs.
  - earthboundkid 3y ago
    Agreed. I don't need to be convinced because I definitely do some language related tasks without using my normal, chatty inner monologue. For example, when I try to speak Japanese via an English inner monologue, it's extremely slow. To be fluent I need to just go straight to Japanese, preferably without thinking at all.

wharvle 3y ago

I dunno how it worked, but I went much of my childhood without an inner voice. Didn’t seem to hinder me at all. One day I played around with imagining my thoughts as a voice in my head. Kept it up for a few more days. When I tried to stop, found I couldn’t, not entirely. Had one ever since. I still wouldn’t say my inner voice forms my words for speech or much of my writing, even now. If I consider what I might say ahead of time, yes, if I’m just talking, no. And of course if I think about it (as I am now) then it gets more involved in that process.

firecall 3y ago

There is a famously extensive and popular Reddit thread about this! Which I'm sure someone will link to :-)

SuperHeavy256 3y ago
can you link to it? I'm interested in reading it.