cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/2916897
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The original was posted on /r/science by /u/mvea on 2024-05-15 10:17:06+00:00.
TIL some people have an inner voice. What is for you folks, like imaginary sounds?
The FBI did a study and most serial killers don’t have an inner monologue… You can add that to the TIL.
I wonder what causes this? Genetics, random, maybe issues during speech development as a child?
Probably a combination of environment (nurture) and simple evolution. The brain is a complex computer that handles a metric-fuck-ton of information. Some minor variation in how that information is processed or accessed is bound to develope, especially when the sample size is in the billions.
I don’t think issues is a great word for something that doesn’t have an obvious negative outcome.
I have an inner monologue that is something like an auditory version of my thoughts. Reminds me of a movie narrator explaining what people arre thinking, but not a verbal exchange like the article describes. It is absolutely zero help in remembering things because it switches to my current thoughts, and doesn’t just run in the background. It doesn’t seem to be a negative at all, and it is hearing hearing what I’m thinking but not rrally hearing because it doesn’t sound like anyone in particular.
On the visual side, I can’t picture something I haven’t seen before and only have brief flashes of what I have seen before. Can’t picture anything in my mind except the vaguest of stereotypical ideas, like a tropical island is a tiny island with a palm tree or a lagoon. Maybe the rough outline of a mountain peak. Can’t draw anything like that from imagination, but can do a pretty solid sketch of something that I have a visual reference for. Also not really an issue, since most things don’t require picturing them without seeing them, but it did derail my interest in art and I can’t do any of the meditation exercises that involve picturing myself somewhere.
I assume any of these kinds of differences can be caused by a combination of genetics and environment since genes are expressed differently based on experience and environments can also impact people in ways that don’t involve genes.
I think we will eventually find that it’s connected to a lot of other areas. I was thinking of other senses. Someone mentioned taste - i can sort of taste things I’ve eaten before that sound good. I don’t think feeling tactile things that aren’t there is a thing, but maybe some people have that?
The lack of auditory thing doesn’t bother me at all. Visual part does bother me. I’m terrible with faces - I introduce myself to people repeatedly and I get confused in shows with too many characters. I lost my mom last year and i can’t see her face in my head. Everytime i see a photo of her it’s a little bit surprising. Sometimes i stare at my husband - I’m afraid I’ll lose my memory one day and won’t recognize him. I lost my cat once and brought in another cat that looked similar. My cat was just hiding and freaked out!
NPCs
maybe my brains broken but when I read stuff my “inner voice” is what I hear in my head. so do you guys not do that too? do the people without inner voices not hear anything when they read stuff?
I have a non-verbal inner voice which gives meta-commentary on my verbal inner voice. If I want to think about what I’m thinking, that’s what is going on.
Oh, the non-verbal one prob does that thing where they look directly into the camera all disappointed & defeated.
It’s voices all the way down!
I always thought only mentally ill people (schizophrenic) have inner voice(s) that is until I learned everyone else has so it’s me that I am not normal lol
I feel like it makes grammar harder tbh. I have to edit shit again and again if I want it to look good for you nerds.
When I read stuff, my inner dialog reads it back to me, you don’t get that? Like in the movies when a someone is writing or reading a letter.
When I read stuff, my inner dialog reads it back to me, you don’t get that? Like in the movies when a someone is writing or reading a letter.
So, it’s like you’re reading twice? Like you’re perceiving it with your eyes/occipital line and then your inner dialog verbalizes it for you? Or all in one shot?
All in oneshots - as I read or write, I hear it in my voice while doing it.
I see images when I read ,like in movies’ I see a theatre, someone reading a letter I see old man reading a letter on a xix century chair with a gray beard and cigarette and focused gaze, jumping from image to image like this and more unspecified ‚ideas’. When I solve a problem I usually use those kind of mind lego bricks to build something in mind and test it. It’s all imagination based.
I guess I may like books more than average person. I feel like if reading was accompanied by inner monologue it would be slower instead of just direct words to images so to say but at the same time I often lose details when reading or don’t remember them at all considering the action feels like a movie in the head
I have to read professional books or physics slightly different and often twice same thing but I guess that’s normal when the topic is more complex that it’s hard to form an image connected to the equations and get all these things in head properly connected to form understanding which for me means building some imaginary concept of it from the mind Lego bricks that is logical and won’t collapse. No idea if it is typical way of things or not.
I would guess it’s normal for your imagination to draw what you read, but I guess people have different levels of imagination. I myself don’t imagination stuff clearly, more of a haze. People who are naturally good at drawing, I would guess have strong imagination, where they can picture what they’re drawing in clear details.
My understanding is that among other issues schizophrenics view their internal monologue as not being their own thoughts, but rather an external voice. Take that with a grain of salt though, because it’s just something I vaguely remember reading on the Internet at some point.
Sounds peaceful. Mine goes like mad sometimes, it’s even woken me from sleep.
How does this work? Like you sometimes can’t control your inner voice, it just says things to you on its own accord?
For me it’s like there’s another me inside my head who just talks at random. I can usually control it, or maybe it controls me, or maybe it is me, or just a part of me. I think a lot of who I am as a person consists of the words bouncing around in my head and my relationship with them at any given time.
That’s also not normal
No I know
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Try thinking some sentences (like a song lyrics or a conversation) while holding your lips and tongue completely still, I mean not moving them even a tiny bit.
Those are probably the quick-thinker types. I wonder if people with inner voices take longer when making decision because they have to “listen” to the their inner voices.
I’ve got both pathways in my brain. Thinking without words is definitely faster. Verbal thought is better for communication and crystallisation of ideas. I.e. I think about something non-verbally, then internally verbalise the conclusions to help fix it in my memory and communicate it.
Have to admit the number of people in here with full internal voices has made me realize why podcasts and long videos of youtubers talking are so popular.
I hate them because it’s like spending 10 minutes to be drip fed 1 minute’s worth of information.
I hate videos of talking and i don’t understand why tiktok is popular. I can skim an article without watching 10 minutes of crap.
Exactly, it’s like not being able to fast travel in a game.
I like tiktok for non talky stuff like those 10 second videos of a fox walking along or something.
A friend asked me the same thing, they have a back and forth of voices, at significant speed, and then they reach a decision. Whereas I just “know” all the pros and cons (to the best of my ability) all at once if that makes sense?
I don’t know what it is I know, except that if I start flapping my gums the ol’ blackbox will fill in the details. I kind of realise it as I’m saying it lol
It’s like chunks and patterns for me.
I don’t think i’m a quick thinker guy, but my reflexes are shockingly good. Like i i sometimes knock something over while cooking and i just see it in the corner of my eyes and somehow catch it midair. But in this fraction of a second my inner monologue still goes: i just knocked something over, but what, oh right, i put the soda stream bottle on the counter because i just emptied the dishwasher. Oh no it’s also probably the glass one, because i have three glass bottles and only one that is plastic, so this could bet really messy when it breaks, they are also kinda expensive.
And then i somehow hold it in my hand before i fully caught up. Kinda like when you snooze for 10 minutes but have like 2 hours worth of dreams.I believe that means you’re the kwizatz haderach
Stillgar: Lisan Al Gaib!
Definitely those Atreides genes.
I’m convinced that a great part of the people that claim to not have an inner voice are either:
- lying to come off as interesting
- unaware of their inner voice
- not understanding what ‘inner voice’ means. It’s not exactly like someone is talking to you, right? But it does come close.
I recently learned that some people do hear a voice in their head. Some see pictures too.
The mind of an artist perhaps? I can see vivid film grade depictions of whatever I want in any style I can imagine.
Its quite frustrating when I know my hands could never produce what I see in my mind.
For the longest time I assumed it was just a literary device, not an actual thing anyone really does.
So, if I tell you “I’ll give you $10,000 for you to spend in 24 hours. Spend 20 seconds to think about it,” what goes through your head? Don’t you hear anything like “shit, that’s a lot of money?! Where to start, where to start…”?
Don’t you “have words” in your head to form thoughts?
No words here at all. I generally don’t use words for thinking unless I’m trying to think of a sentence or something like that.
I wish we could swap brains for five minutes. But what is “thinking” for you? Can you picture things in your mind? Moving objects? Suppose that you’re looking for a spoon and open your silverware drawer, and it’s unexpectedly filled with cotton candy. And you live alone! What goes through your head?! Because the first thing that goes through my head is surprise, followed by the phrase “what the fuck?!?!?!?!”
I also can’t picture anything in my mind either. It’s like a different language that is based on feelings instead of words. You know when you move next to a fire and you feel hot? You don’t need any words to feel hot, right? It’s kinda like that. I would open the drawer and feel a “this isn’t right” feeling.
Wild. Thanks! The feeling hot analogy is glorious.
Don’t hear anything like “shit, that’s a lot of money?! Where to start, where to start…”
No and it’s amazing to me that you’d even be able to think of it in 20 seconds with all that chatter in your brain.
As I was reading your comment I could sort of hear parts of that, because it’s you “speaking” to me, but as soon as I saw it the $10,000 imediately became a sort of conceptual bundle located in front of me, the 24h was like a moving spatial cycle thing and my brain was plotting possibilities based on how far I would have to travel (the ones falling inside the cycle are the do-able ones) and locating a whole lot of stuff branching out from my computer with short action times.
Also my brain had immediately reached to the right hand middle distance which is where it “keeps” investment advice. It had a quick dart to the far away centre-left and I had a flash/photorealistic image of home furnishings out there but rejected instantly as the tangled sense of moving parts between me and it meant the process toward them is complex and would take up too much of the 20 second processing time to even see if they would fit in the 24h cycle.
@southsamurai did the above comment make sense?
It’s hard because we have to translate it to get it across -for me it feels a bit like being asked how do you know where your arms are relative to your body.
about the arms. spacial awareness… and a surprising number of ppl don’t have that
I didn’t express it very well - I meant basic proprioception, which most people have. We need it for things like walking or lifting a cup to our mouths.
Fantastic! Thank you for answering, and I have a similar process going on in my brain as well - but it’s combined with “me talking” as well. For example, if I become aware of that “right hand side” investment section you described, I’d probably say’ “ooh investing, maybe?”
Thanks, that makes sense! But I don’t understand how that could fit in temporally? Like, wouldn’t you have already got halfway through the possible investment overview while you were still talking? Or is it more that you’re doing both at once?
Correct, at once. Like a teacher who is writing on something on the whiteboard while speaking.
Or that scene in Minority Report in which Tom Cruise is going through videos/scenes/etc with his hands while saying things loud to himself.
Not op, but I’m curious if anyone will help me understand my own reality. I immediately close my eyes to make the experience authentic.
“I have to spend 10 grand in 24 hours” as a imaginary verbal statement. (internal monologue?). Then I “lookup” spending money memories and create an object in my head without any attributes. I can tell it has emotional attachment from the memories, best described as a label. (I determine to go online shopping without much thought).
“most likely buy raw materials like gold”. [Pause]. But what’s unique about this situation that I can take advantage of? 24 hours [trail off]. Bonds would be easy and just postpone payment. Is laundering an option? Why is this person giving away 10k? What damage can it do?"
As the passenger, it feels like large derivitive stuff is silent. The inner dialogue is mostly probing. But here is a significant amount of silence betweens questions. I don’t have a visual canvas.
Are others answering these questions? Frequently, I have a silent mind but pondering takes probing.
Interesting! In my case, if I remember all of a sudden that I have to do laundry tomorrow, but there’s a conflict, then I’ll “speak” in my mind, with my own voice, saying “oh shit, tomorrow I have Bob’s party and I haven’t done laundry yet - all my clothes are dirty!!” Well, maybe with not that many words. Maybe more like “Oh shit, I forgot! How do I solve this…?”
It sort of sounds like yoi do it as a way of externalizing the questions, like it’s a different part of your brain or your brain wants to make it clear to you that the question process is different from the answer process.
To me a question feels like knowing there’s something behind my occipital bone and sensing it moving forward towards my eyes. So it’s not verbalised but it’s definitely a separate feeling.
Babies can think before they can talk 🤷♂️
But they can understand you before they can talk too.
We don’t disagree with this one, but I don’t see how this is relevant. I wish I could ask a baby this question, but they can’t answer, can they? So I’m asking OP instead.
Ah sorry, I think I misread your previous comment as if you were saying you had to have words to think, maybe implying other people were not correct when they said they didn’t have words? And I was trying to say it was possible, but I see you weren’t actually trying to argue that now, so nvm!
I also don’t think I’m a words person. Sometimes I’ll talk out loud to myself while I’m doing something, and I definitely CAN think my thoughts as words in my head, but yeah usually I just do stuff without it. I mean to some degree everyone does things without brain words, right? If you’re getting ready for bed, so you think “now I need to stand up, now I move my left foot, now my right, now I move my right arm to pick up the toothbrush”. Like, you have to take some actions without narrating them, right? We’re just like that, but more so 😄
Yup, I wasn’t trying to argue. Don’t worry, friend - all good :)
Ok, in that case you’re like me, then. It’s not like I’m constantly chatting in my head. That sounds exhausting, actually. But my “word thoughts” closely resemble the words I’d say if someone told me “think aloud while you’re doing things - you don’t need to be as detailed.” In your example, if I’m getting ready to bed, I wouldn’t describe in my mind everything that I need to do. It would be more like “a’aight, time for bed” (do stuff, do more stuff), “where’s my phone charger? ah! here.” (do more stuff, then some more stuff) “…aaaaand done! Ooh, very nice!”
It’s like I “know” all the options (pros and cons and obstacles and things to think about) all at once, any time I have is then spent on the emotional consequences of them. But more time doesn’t usually mean discovering more options.
So like… how do you think through ideas? Philosophize? You don’t bounce ideas around in your head and deeply weigh multiple options? It’s just… empty?
Just chunks of thoughts not in words or pictures.
Personally, when I’m working through a problem, I’ll usually force it into words (either out loud or to myself), but that’s a conscious action rather than a subconscious response. I choose to speak those things, and it’s me (not an amorphous voice) who speaks them.
But often after forcing the thoughts into words I’ll hit upon an interesting thread, and my mind will leap ahead faster than spoken language can catch up. It’s only when I hit a roadblock that I slow things down into language-speed.
I mean that’s the same as anyone. When people talk about their inner voice, the voice is still them. They’re in control of what it says. It can get a little out of hand sometimes (like getting a song stuck in your head) but ultimately it’s you doing it.
Same with being able to “leap ahead” faster than the spoken word. Like, if someone gets a knife pulled on them they don’t have to think “I will run now”, they simply run. The internal monologue is an addition, not a replacement, if that makes sense.
From how people are describing it, it’s a necessary addition rather than an optional one
I have some very loud voices in my head. One is intentional, like when I read or write things out I hear my own voice in my head. At least one of them just talks shit to me all the time. It’s not like schizophrenia “I hear voices”, it’s just a thought that I’m not actively having. When my depression gets bad it’s gets really loud so I drown it out with music and books.
I can’t see pictures in my head.
On another note, I’m pretty sure religious nutjobs really hear their own inner monologue and think it’s a god talking to them. That’s why their god always agrees with them.
Only 1-3% of people lack the ability to visualize images in their head.
Somewhat related, I recently realized I can’t really remember the taste of food at all. I can remember the texture of the food, and whether I liked it or not, but not how it actually tastes. For example, I know I like chocolate but I have no desire to eat it most of the time because I can’t remember anything about the taste except for the texture. But once I start eating chocolate and have the taste lingering in my mouth, I find myself craving more of it until the taste fades and I forget what it tasted like again.
Oh man! That is a perfect example! I have not able to understand the voice or the picture… Like you actually hear a voice or you see an image??.. But I totally understand the taste - almost like the shadow of a taste in your mouth for something that sounds good. I guess that’s why what people say, “what do you have a taste for”?)
When I first learned that other people see and hear, I started asking around. From My polling, about 30% of people either don’t hear or don’t see. I’ve only found a handful of people who don’t do either. I read some articles that say you can train the visual.
So, if you study a map of a building, noticing that it has a kitchen at a certain place, then in go inside the building (without the map), and someone says “go to the kitchen,” how do you know where the kitchen is? How do you imagine the paths, rooms, hallways to follow?
If I told you “a pink and brown dog,” you can’t “see” that dog in your mind at all?
The map would be tough. If someone showed me the map and said, go to the kitchen, I would try remember, turn left then right then its around to the left. I would remember it in words, not visually.
Brown and pink dog…in my mind I see a hazy face of a poodle with fluffy pink ears. I can’t see the full dog. I can’t walk around the image and explore it more. Its just a hazy partial visual that flashes in my mind for a moment.
So, if you study a map of a building, noticing that it has a kitchen at a certain place, then in go inside the building (without the map), and someone says “go to the kitchen,” how do you know where the kitchen is? How do you imagine the paths, rooms, hallways to follow?
I know this isn’t true of everybody with alphantasia, but what I do in this situation is I get lost. I can’t visualize walking through the space while I study the map, and I can’t bring the map to mind when I’m actually there. Some people with aphantasia have no trouble finding their way around, so I think in my case it must be that I’m missing some innate sense of direction as well that visualization might have helped me to compensate for, if only I could.
If I told you “a pink and brown dog,” you can’t “see” that dog in your mind at all?
Correct. I’m not 100% on the aphantasia spectrum, so if I think about it then I might get the briefest flash of some dog, like an afterimage at best, and I can’t hold it in my mind, or manipulate it, or see any details or color. It’s not even really a complete outline or anything either that flashes for that quarter-second.
When I read a book, I don’t know what the characters or places look like. But I have always been able to draw really well. So it’s really a mystery how this all works.
I definitely have both. I can even visualize things with my eyes open. I switch back and forth between modes depending on the content I’m working on in my head.
Same. I thought it was that way for everyone. I can have a full conversation in my head while visually building something in a 3D mental image.
I can even visualize things with my eyes open.
Are you able to build complex visualizations while maintaining eye contact with someone? Once the concept becomes complex enough, I have to break eye contact with them (usually staring at nothing above their heads) and unfocus my eyes. Once I do that, the sky’s the limit on how complex the mental visual can get and be abstracted, but something about staring at a face (reading realtime facial reactions?) consumes the part of my brain I need for the very complex visuals.
That sounds pretty similar to me. I have to really be focusing to do it, if I were looking at someone and trying to do it, there would be a lot of competing sensory information. I could do something but it would keep getting broken up by distraction. It definitely works best just in a nice quiet room.
So kind of like Werner Herzog then, who once stated that he never, ever dreams. But he keeps having visions with his eyes wide open, in broad daylight, all the time. He describes them in his terrific book “Of Walking in Ice.”
His thing sounds different. I do dream (often prolifically), and when I visualize with my eyes open it tends to be something I’m trying to visualize such as a new paint color, furniture placement. I’m pretty good at it, my visions usually work out pretty well when taken to action. I’m imagining them more than really seeing them, but I’m able to do it well enough to accomplish the tasks I need to visualize.
I’m so bad at furniture arranging and color matching. But I’m excellent at stacking boxes or other items in a small space.
For me it’s even weirder than that. Those pictures exist in my mind and I can “feel” them there but the conscious part of me that’s supposed to see them can’t see shit. I can describe to you the things that are in them or even draw them out as they exist in my mind, but I can’t see them. The part of me that’s giving directions? It can “see” the map of the building and my position in it just fine like it’s staring straight at a live minimap, but the conscious part of me that should be able to visualize that stuff? Nothing. I close my eyes and try to visualize that dog and I see nothing but black. But I can feel the presence of the image that the part of me that does the mental conjuring of images is making.
It’s like turning the monitor off on a computer. Everything is still running even though you can’t see it.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Not op, but I have a very weak ability to visualise. The data is more abstracted. A map is a set of spacial connections that define an area. My brain has learnt to pull that from a map. What I can’t do is recall the map to figure out additional information. If my brain didn’t think it was relevant when I looked at it, the information is likely gone.
There are definitely pros and cons to it. I’m not limited to what I could visualise, when thinking. This lets me dig deeper into more complex ideas and patterns. It also makes other tasks a lot harder. I struggle a lot with faces and appearances.
As for the dogs, I have an abstracted “model” in my mind. The size and breed of the dogs is undefined. There are 2 dog entities in my mind. 1 brown, which is quite generic, the other has pink attached to it, that cross links it with poodles etc.
I can personally push it to a visualisation, but it takes significant mental effort, and the results are unstable.
I’m not the OP either but my brain seems to work the same way that yours and theirs do. I’d say you did a good job of describing how it works for people like us.
One difference though is that you don’t seem to have the visual recall that I do. I don’t have a “photographic” memory but I could probably recall the hypothetical map as a visual object and examine it for additional information that I didn’t notice the first time.
I can personally push it to a visualisation, but it takes significant mental effort, and the results are unstable.
You may actually be better at this than I am. Describing my results as “unstable” would charitable. I also don’t get dog breeds, just amorphous and blurry blobs with rorsarch like colors slapped on them.
I also don’t get dog breeds, just amorphous and blurry blobs with rorsarch like colors slapped on them.
That’s akin to what I get. The core structure is there, but it’s almost a sense of what should be there. It’s akin to seeing things out of the corner of your eye, while overtired. Your brain tells you what it is, and you accept it, it doesn’t necessarily match what you are actually ‘seeing’.
I ‘know’ how dogs move, I ‘know’ their body structure. I can force that down to a single image, but it wants to be so much more. All the senses of ‘dogness’ compressed into a single entity.
So you basically visualize maps as graphs? You’re the human equivalent of the A* algorithm!
It’s spacially based. It makes more sense in 3D. It’s just as compatible with echolocation as visual data. (The soundscape of a room tells you a LOT about your surroundings). I believe it’s based within my visual system, just stripped of the superfluous visualisations. Interestingly, I can actually map mathematics into the same structures.
I’m doing a piss poor job of explaining it. Language lacks the nuance to describe it well, and I lack the skill to bend it into shape.
next question: how many times would you have to walk a new space (like a house) to remember it?
I can remember it fairly quickly. My spacial sense is particularly good. I can easily get a sense of negative space (hidden rooms etc) as well as good predictive skills. My personal problem is when maps get large or don’t overlap. It’s either mapped well, or not. It can take me a while to join up multiple smaller sub maps in my mind. (Think office or stadium sized spaces).
I can remember the layout and draw it, but can’t see it in my head. Building layout is very concrete and is easy to know things like ‘My office is at the end of the hall on the third floor.’ When asked to describe a person I’m limited to very basic descriptions - short/tall, heavy/thin, black/white. My coworkers were making fun of me recently because i described someone as tall, maybe white, possibly red hair.
If I told you “a pink and brown dog,” you can’t “see” that dog in your mind at all?
Jim Pickens’s cat popped into my head. Sigh.
for me some reason a pitbull
There’s a kitchen off the hallway just past the bathroom on the left. No magic path to follow. I hate those video games where you just wander around! I can’t see a dog - i don’t know what kind of dog, size/shape of its parts, what parts are brown, what parts are pink, … If you said poodle or German shepherd, and i focused hard i could get sort of a loose wire frame outline.
I have several voices in my head and they never shut the fuck up! 😩
I am not sure about myself. I assume it is English, but now when i think about it my thoughts are much slower, and trip over them selves. It seems odd to consider thought in a means that is contrived for a much less efficient medium. So maybe i don’t think in a language at all and just attribute the meanings after the fact. I can visualize objects in my head though
yeh not everyone can visualize in their head. weirdly enough (or maybe not), I can taste in my head. like if you say tomato I can taste it. I should’ve been a chef maybe
I can taste in my head but there’s a limited range of what I can smell in my head.
Like, the smell of chocolate or wet dog or chanel no 5, no problem. The smell of my mother’s house or a meadow on a sunny day, very vague and uncertain.
yes now that I think of it, smell is def harder. I can only really tell you if something smelled good, like a gf’s sweater (prob pheromones) or bad, because those are easier to forget
Taste is an interesting one.
I can’t say I can truly taste at will but I can remember the experience of tasting something well enough to be able to “visualize” what taste I am craving, sometimes by imagining different tastes one by one until I find the right one. I’m not really tasting them but sort of replaying the experience of tasting them which is enough for me to understand the taste.
But it’s more like my brain describing it to me than actual taste. It’s weird.
I mean I can have an inner dialogue, but normally it goes straight onto the idea level of thinking and I don’t waste resources trying to shape it into words. I can do that, though.
If you’re needing to explain those ideas to other people then it’s useful to expound
Yes, of course the translation occurs while communicating, and I’m pretty good at putting my thoughts into words when I need it.
