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Why do we have an internal monologue?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Not everyone does, I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people on this topic.
People's thought processes range from monologue to dialog to narration to silence to images to raw concepts without form.
I personally do not have a constantly running monologue, but rather have relatively short bursts of thought interspersed with long periods of silence.
I always find this conversation fascinating and it makes me wonder in what other ways people may experience the world differently.
I do have a constant internal monologue. Every word I read is spoken in my mind. My thought process is, to my awareness, me talking things out in my head.
Yeah, I also "hear" the words in my head as I read them, and that goes for everything.
I kinda wish I thought in shapes and colors though. While my imagination is okay, I get the feeling it's not as... vivid or Shar as others imaginations are.
Me to. This is the first time I think about that. Everything I read or write gets spoken aloud.
When I am hearing a book or a podcast there is silence though, because when there is someone else talking, my inner voice would interfere.
Fascinating.
That is so interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I don't have one at all. Spent ages thinking that it was just a figure of speech, but when I found out I became fascinated by it.
The current theory is that at some early point in our evolution we literally had a voice in our head, not unlike how some forms of schizophrenia present.
It's called the bicameral mind.
https://gizmodo.com/did-everyone-3-000-years-ago-have-a-voice-in-their-head-510063135
In my day to day life it makes little difference however, despite being an avid reader and writer I struggle tremendously to read aloud.
I don't know for sure but I suspect it is connected.
In the article they bring up many questionable aspects of this idea, which also seems to lack in scientific support.
Absolutely. I'm no expert, and since there weren't any studies performed on people from that era, I'd expect it to be taken as a theory rather than a fact.
Hypothesis not Theory
Pedantry, not conversation.
Still, you are correct.
Thanks, I actually wanted to post that as a question. I would have thought that reading silently would be harder.
I worked as a typesetter for years. I have a rather speedy reading pace (it isn't inate, rather through practice)... but I do wonder if not having to 'hear' words changes the rhythm of reading.
I'm also fascinated if other folk perform accents in their head whilst reading? Do different characters sound different or is there one 'voice' that acts as a narrator?
For me different characters have different voices. The narrative is either the voice of the character whose perspective is currently shown (which can lead to conflicts if I don't know the perspective at the start) or it is how I imagine the author to sound like or my own voice.
I won't pretend in not a little jealous of that. I can only imagine the texture that adds to a novel. Plus, it's like a form of creative collaboration... You are present in the text... How cool is that?
Neither. I think of the idea of the words, rather than hearing the words in my mind. Which is to say, though I can read a sentence and string together the words I read in my mind, the l there is no voice to those words, no gender, no accent, no volume etc.
I do read extremely fast in my native language (Spanish). Feels like entire sentences go straight into concepts and my brain builds a whole world based on what I'm reading.
However I started reading in a verbalized way with my second and third languages (English and Swedish) because I was completely useless at pronunciation, while reading at a high level. So I had to learn the sounds and they started invading my reading, which I sort of resent.
But the verbalization is still very mild; faint, monotone, non-enunciated.
Some people talked about poetry and I hadn't considered that my absolute lack of poetry-sense could be related. People have told me about the metrics and whatnot and it really doesn't click. I have to sort of analyze a poem and explain it to myself in prose, and I imagine that defeats the purpose of poetry?
And there's something else I'm interested in. When you think, do you think in a mixture of those languages? Or do you actively translate? Is it a conscious thing?
I natively speak Swedish but I've studied and used English for 4-5 years so I speak English fluently and would consider myself bilingual. I can think in either English or Swedish and I can mix sentences in Swedish and English freely. But I never think in a language that's really a combination of those languages (what we would call svengelska in Swedish).
I'm also studying french and German but I'm not fluent in any of those languages. When using those languages (or at least German) I think in a language that's truly a combination of that language and Swedish/English. I use words from all languages and construct sentences as I would in Swedish (reverse word order for questions, no weird German thing with adjectives at the end etc). This of course becomes a pain as soon as I have to express a thought to someone else.
Hadn't thought of this...what's your take on poetry, especially meter-forward? Like, Robert W Service or Robert Frost, I feel would be less interesting if they didn't have their beat.
I don't do voices or accents when I read. Everything is in the same 'voice,' which isn't quite the same as my spoken voice. My internal voice enunciates much better and slightly lower pitch. It's more like the voice I wish I had than the voice I do have. :)
Interesting you brought up Service... Grew up reading him as he's from my home town.
I do like poetry, but I'm much more inclined to concrete work, or something closer to what William Burroughs was after.
The shape rather than the rhythm.
Never thought of it that way. Though I still adore Service for the narrative.
I like that your internal monologue is an idealised voice.
I am pretty sure it does. From what I've heard people that essentially "read out loud" inside their head tend to have a have a slower reading pace. I don't think Anauralia is necessary to not do that, either.
Poetry instantly comes to mind. I have a very different experience when I silently read poetry vs. reading aloud or listening to someone read it aloud, especially when the poem is written with rhythm in mind.
Oh yeah, often I'll even have a specific person in mind playing the character: an actor, someone I know, etc. I often don't even realize that I'm doing this
it depends on if I heard a voice of that character before for example Batman is always Kevin Conroy and the joker is always Mark Hamill. another usecase is if I listened to the audio book then start reading a text book. Ray Potter shows up alot.
Out of curiosity do you visualize in your mind? Like if I say a stapler can you conjure one?
The people with both Aphantasia and Anauralia fascinate me.
I’ll chuck in my answer since I’ve been asked this before too.
I don’t “see” a stapler. I perceive a future state where the pages are stapled. This does appear visually in my mind but not a a a picture of stapled pages rather a set of symbols that incorporate the task “to staple” into the other things that I am concerned with at the point of thinking about that task.
“Set of symbols?” Is probably your follow up question - yes, geometry or iconography that describe the path from here to that future state where that pages are stapled.
That’s the best I can do. None of this is literally narrated in my mind, however typing this out to you each sentence is “auditioned” as I imagine I am speaking it to you.
That is fascinating! And different than I've heard described elsewhere by either the "non-visual" or "non-verbal" thinkers. I think I am pretty generic, when I think of a stapler I literally see a red swingline stapler floating in a void like in a 3d modeling program (that stapler specifically due to the movie Office Space, and therefore I also own one).
Do you enjoy coding, math, and logic?
Yes. Like many here it is my vocation.
Makes total sense to me that you think this way then.
I teach middle school and I think mostly verbally with pictures thrown in.
"I should staple this" plays in my head and I have a dreamlike image of a stapler I'm looking for, or perhaps its location. If I focus, I can make those pictures very vivid, but usually they aren't in my day to day.
I talk to myself in my head literally non-stop. It's a full day dialogue with myself - which I suppose makes it a monologue. But it's pretty involved with a lot of back and forth.
It’s so interesting. I imagine your experience is something like Venoms relationship with Eddie Brock which cracks me up!
Absolutely. My day job is as a conceptual artist (seriously, the hours are good and I get to travel). Visualising objects is a large part of that. I've also worked in video game level design and found thinking in terms of 3D space pretty easy too. Just no words in there, or specifically, no voice.
That sounds heavenly. Mine will not shut up. And when I've run out of current problems to worry about, I start thinking about all my past fuck ups an embarrassments. And that's just in the time it takes to a simple activity. When I'm at work it is constant flipping back and forth between my anxious thoughts and doing my work and worrying about how I might be fucking up my work.
This describes me 100% and I fucking hate it. And I’m sorry you go through it, too.
Try vyvanse meds bro it will calm those thoughts. Obviously talk to a doctor about it
I truly wish there was someone who could properly diagnose me. I did take a RAADS test a while back but I didn't have a psychiatrist to bring my results to, so I go undiagnosed and likely will forever with the current health crisis. I don't know if I can go on something like that without a proper diagnosis. I can't even find a family doctor unfortunately.
But I appreciate the tip 😊 thank you.
Mine seems to appear when I'm not on auto-pilot. If I'm heating a can of soup, there's no real thought. I'm probably thinking about other things while carry out simple steps. If I can't find something, it'll pop in and say, "Where did I leave that?" Or maybe something like, "I should call Mom cause it's New Year's Day." Another is, "I'm glad I remembered my umbrella," when in rain. But I don't have monologue about putting on my shoes or locking my door. Those are mechanical tasks while I think about something else in an abstract fashion.
Yeah this is similar to my experience. Some stuff gets done without that monologue, but I'm not completely without it.
I suspect that most people have a partial internal monologue, whereby some thoughts arise to the level of verbiage and others don’t. There is also variance in how self-aware we are of our thoughts themselves. I don’t think anyone can keep up effective, meta self-monitoring 100% of the time, so our own view of our thought process is probably skewed as well. Some people swear that every single thought they have is 100% verbalized. I think that’s impossible and they’re only counting verbal thoughts as thoughts. But no doubt some people verbalize more than others.
Insightful, I've found that most people change their answers at least slightly after having time to observe their thoughts for a while, we are geniuses at believing our own conjectures.
I'd say I can't actively observe a thought without my internal monologue in some way narrating it or articulating what's going on. Frankly that's the reason I have difficulty understanding what it's like for someone without internal monologue.
I’ve been able to observe myself stringing ideas together in a complicated way before actual words can land. The other day this happened and I considered stopping to put words to my thought and decided to just let it go and move on.
Yep, I don't, either. I think mostly subconsciously, then in raw concepts, then images, then words. I have to actively translate what I'm thinking into language in order to consciously understand it myself or communicate it, but I do better if I externalize the language through writing or speaking.
We're very similar, I think. That externalisation as a way of understanding in particular.
I have a committee. Usually made up of people I know well. loud motherfuckers
I have a mixture of types of thought processes. I mostly think in pictures and play things out in my head like a silent movie, but sometimes I have a monologue. Sometimes I think in a way I can't describe with words.