To not believe that some people don't have an internal monologue?

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Even though I've just read this:

ryanandrewlangdon.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/today-i-learned-that-not-everyone-has-an-internal-monologue-and-it-has-ruined-my-day/

I can't quite understand if. Hoping some MNs of the non-monologue type can help me out.

Especially with the reading part.

When I'm reading descriptions fast I don't properly say the words in my head, more of a picture forms I guess. But I'm hearing any dialogue words.

And chattering away to myself in my head all day long. Must be nice not to!

Such a fascinating thread. The thing is I just don’t know if I have an internal dialogue as described here. I’m going to try to assess this during the day.

I do think a lot and in quite a lot of depth sort of conceptually but I’m not sure if this is a dialogue or just thinking. It’s like I set myself a 3000 word essay in my head; one that starts with a statement and ends with 'discuss'. 🤔

My spatial reasoning and converting 2-d to 3-d is good and my audio memory is often remarked on but I’d hitherto assumed everyone else was the same. But I struggle to get a clear picture of what areas in our house look like if I’m in a shop. Say I’m looking for new cushions for the sofa, I’ll get them home and they won’t go at all so I need to take a photo on my phone with me.

A friend thinks I have a great memory (I don’t!) but it’s not so much for events but words and conversations I’ve had with people. So I might meet someone casually and they’ll tell me about their cat called Romeo and they have to have an operation and they’re taking them to some specialist place and their car is In the garbage but Bob's sprained his arm ... blah blah. Then I’ll meet them 9 months later and I’ll remember all that detail. And my friend is like, whoa how did you remember all that?

I’d be interested to know if anyone else is like this. I do engage a dialogue though when I can’t remember immediately how to do something though I tend to say it out loud.

Humans are fascinating.

The inner 'voice' thing is really hard to describe, isn't it? It emphatically isn't hearing, but since I can very clearly imagine different voices and accents then 'hear' is the nearest very to it. But it's not hearing. Hmm.

I find when I have spent time with a parent or grandparent, I "hear" my inner chatter in their voice for a day and a night. This actually distresses me in the case of my mother because I dislike her intensely. I do worry about why close family have this effect on what is essentially ME.

Bakedpotatoandgin, I can do that and am really good at learning languages! It had never occurred to me that it would be hard to do. I play back the sentence and visualise the words. I LOVE watching foreign crime dramas and will be heard repeating sentences in languages I don't speak, just to work out what the words are. It's for this reason that I can't watch Finnish programmes - it's just too alien a language to me, I can't get a handle on it and my brain will not let the words just wash over me!

nib - I don't visualise as I have quite poor visualisation ability, I just "hear" it. Weird about the parents thing, I don't get that but if I've been reading a book with a distinctive narrative style then the voice happens in that style. Weird.

I thought everyone had an internal monologue.

I cant imagine not having one or not being able to firm pictures or imagine scenes developing etc..

Its one of the reasons Im never bored.

I often wish i could capture the monologue as sometimes, it’s brilliant!

Does it seem on this thread that most people don’t have an internal monologue?

@Deux yes, I’m a bit like that but I remember pictures, dates and details but not words so much (it depends how interesting they are).

If I write something down (even if its pages long), I can remember it word for word as it appears in my mind’s eye like a photograph. I can also do this with images.

The spoken word and conversations are far more difficult though unless i make a real effort.

I have an active internal monologue.
I don't seem to have any sort of inner eye though. I really struggle to picture things.

Only very important things must be part of people’s internal monologues though.

Presumably people with internal monologues are not orally reporting in their minds when walking into a room... ‘the room is painted green, there are two people in it, there are three chairs, two windows, a hatstand, a bookcase’ and on and on.

They must think these things, but not in an internal monologue. The monologue must only say some very particular things.

And people who don’t monologue still think. They just think about everything in a similar way to thinking the chair is blue, the man is a Southerner etc.

I'm all vocal, I can't visualise to save my life, I actually think I'd be screed if I had to give the police a description!!!
DH on the other hand is completely image orientated, he showed me the tweet and we had a really interesting discussion about how we do different things because he's good at being given a process and following it, where as I find that really hard, I have to be talked through it, and I find that whoever told me how to do it, is the voice talking me through it every time...

Pretty sure I almost exclusively think in words. Visualization of particular objects is difficult for me though I can mentally travel around familiar spaces quite easily.

When younger, I spoke a foreign language fairly fluently and had a boyfriend whom I spoke to in that language. I remember my thoughts would usually flip back from that language into English about an hour into the day after we parted company.

Sometimes people who have had strokes and experienced some language loss (aphasia) and then recovered describe their inner voice going quiet for a while.

No inner monologue involving voices, words or pictures here.
I sometimes have a snatch of a song if I've been listening to a piece of music over and over.
And I do have thoughts like 'remember to send sports kit in with DS' or 'we need bread' but they aren't words or voices.
I can't see pictures in my head if I'm asked to visualise things- even my nearest and dearest. I would be shit at trying to describe anyone who had committed a crime!
I'm also faceblind and am pretty sure I'm autistic. It runs in the family and 3 of our kids have been diagnosed but I love reading, music, arty things even though my degree is science/ medicine based.
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If you only think in voices, how do you, for example, shop?

If you are staring at a supermarket shelf with a hundred different kinds of tins on it, you can’t be reading every single kind of product out loud in your head.

So how do you find the tinned peaches or whatever?

And then how does your hand know at what level to move to pick them up? Is there a voice going 2 metres to the right, now 2 cm up, now extend the fingers 1 cm?

@EndOfTheDay processes like picking stuff up are subconscious thought. Lots of our thinking is subconscious.

The inner voice is used in conscious thought. I would use it when planning something. I also use it to solve maths problems for example. I tend to have a very clear logical narrative of the steps I took to solve a problem.

And sometimes my conscious minds sets my sub conscious off on a task like remembering someone's name and it pops up with it a few minutes later.

If I was a computer program my inner voice would be running on the main thread whilst other bits of my brain popped off to do back ground processing tasks.

Some people (particularly older people) seem to even speak out loud to themselves. I never mutter to myself “where did I put....” for example, or other questions or even profanities.

Apparently actually hearing voices in your head is a sign of a mental disorder, so an internal monologue with an actual voice is concerning.

I have a very strong visual inner monologue. Which runs almost like a silent movie, with occasional captions - “school shoes”, “finish that report”, “oops, clumsy”. Mostly it’s just broad concepts or pictures though. So if I am packing, I won’t think “must pack, get down the suitcase, where is the list” but more just visualise the packing, remember where I put the suitcase, think about a picture of the list on my laptop etc.

But I spend a lot of time replaying conversations or having conversations I plan to have and that is definitely verbal. Entirely complete and grammatically correct sentences.

If anyone does have a strong inner monologue and likes a reading challenge I’d recommend Ducks, Newburyport. I heard the author being interviewed at a literary festival and she said she doesn’t think that way but had to make it work for the novel. It’s made me think lots about how I think.

Wait what? People have conversations with themselves all day? 😱

I'm confused. I have voice when I read, I have a voice when I concentrate on thinking like making a list I'll hear myself say "milk, eggs, bread...", but I prefer to think out loud if I can, so say milk bread eggs as km writing.

I do not have a constant voice though, I don't talk to myself. Is that what an internal monologue is??

I don't have a constant voice @SeperatedSwans but as I'm writing this right now, I am hearing my own voice in my head, and when I'm doing things I talk myself through it, and as I said up thread, if someone had talked me through it, it's their voice I hear.
If I'm thinking, it's actually me talking in my head, I can't imagine it different, however dh see's it written down or pictures and doesn't hear anything internally, although he did say when he has an earworm he can hear the song in his head.

I used to have a strong internal dialogue with psychic feelings and images and intuitions. I went out on my 40th birthday and took a micro amount of MDMA and it went. It has so far yet to come back I hope it come back soon.

Subconscious has a very specific meaning. People don’t shop subconsciously.

I don't have an internal monologue either. My thoughts seem to drop into my mind unbidden like falling into water. I find it hard to think deeply because of this.

On the upside I have constant focus on what I'm doing in the moment and over the top recall visually of say directions or towns or whatever.

If I have something to say I need to say it quickly or I lose it and I think best when I'm talking to someone else - probably because I cant say it to myself in my head.

Apparently actually hearing voices in your head is a sign of a mental disorder, so an internal monologue with an actual voice is concerning.

www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830410-700-are-the-voices-in-your-head-normal/

it isn’t always a sign of madness: our everyday thoughts often sound pretty voice-like. In 2011, Charles Fernyhough and Simon McCarthy-Jones of Durham University, UK, found that 60 per cent of us experience “inner speech” with a back-and-forth conversational quality.

...

On the back of their biggest study so far, he and his colleagues estimate that between 5 and 15 per cent of us hear outside voices, even if only fleetingly or occasionally. About 1 per cent of people with no diagnosis of mental illness hear more persistent, recurring voices. Around the same proportion of the population is diagnosed with schizophrenia, challenging the assumption that the two are related.

I talk to myself - debate best course forward - replay conversations or practise ones I may have- have songs playing in my head - rewrite books/characters in films/books - I think that helps me analyse them - think about ideas. I hear and see in my head but can't do smell/taste or touch. If I'm not thinking in words, pictures or music will be playing usually.

I do have a poor working memory can't see words to spell and can't do mental arthimatic in my head but I have a really good episodic memory - maybe that's because things replay in my head?

I would assume that most people hear a voice some of the time for some specific tasks, with a few people who never hear it and a few people who hear it for every task.

I would assume that the people who never hear it or who can only do things they hear (with the exception of habitual tasks) experience some degree of impairment.

But some of the difference is just down to us all trying to describe how our brains work, which can be difficult to express!

Like I haven’t had a voice in my head thinking about typing any of this, but I have voices in my head if I have two conflicting opinions on something.

And if I were imagining something, only the conversation between characters would be in my brain orally.

I've known this since I was a student and met a fellow student for whom it was the case. Makes perfect sense to me. It's why some people genuinely can't read in their head and you'll see them mouthing along or whispering to themselves as they go.