For me, thinking in words and sentences sounds like thoughs being weighed and slowed down. Seems very unnecessary. On the other hand, I did and always had the the issue of putting my thoughts into words properly. Like the translator is pretty bad and I always struggle and feel like most of the information is lost.
I think there might be some correlation between this and being introverted, socializing is exhausting for me because the translator is not well trained as I don't use it while thinking, and it has to run at 100%. I've talked with my better half about this and she said it's easy for her because the sentences are already there and it takes zero effort to say them, which aligns with my theory.
I do have a terrible "mind chatter" though, I'd rather describe it as white noise. Way too many thoughts going through at once, which makes it very hard to concentrate on anything. So even though not everyone is thinking in words and sentences, this issue can effect all of us.
I know a little Spanish and a tiny bit of German and I can purposely think in those languages, but I’m way too limited in what I can express that it takes a lot of conscious effort. The really fun thing that I’m not sure is normal is that I can very easily switch my monologue to different accents which sound (as I perceive it in my mind) identical to real ones I’ve heard for long enough to replicate. I’m quite good at doing different accents in real life so I expect that’s linked.
I can imitate different voices in my head when reading a novel and I can't even comprehend how one would read and comprehend without hearing everything spoken in ones head. It's just impossible for me.
I do have a constant monologue though that is impossible to shut up. Even if I try to calm it or meditate I would think out loud "calm/meditate/don't think", so that doesn't work at all xD
I did start thinking in English at some point. Before that I would translate all English to German, think about it and translate my German thoughts to English, if I needed to say something. By now I just think in English when I'm in an English context. It feels entirely natural.
For me it’s the inverse actually. I don’t normally hear what I’m reading in my head, I can consciously do so if I want, but more often than not that distracts me because I’m thinking about the words rather than the concepts.
The only time it’s helpful is when I need to focus on a particular word for some reason; for example, if I’m struggling to recall what it means, or if I’m programming and trying to trace where a specific variable is referenced. Keeping the sound in my mind can help in those cases.
This! I feel like I’ve been talking to myself (internally) my entire life, but some in this thread described their thoughts as relationships of topics and concepts, which I also experience.
The extra effort required is strange, considering the research showing that internally vocalized thoughts are reflexively subvocalized by the associated muscles. The only difference between thinking and speaking should thus be the increase in amplitude and precision of muscle movement required to make the vocalization intelligible. Is that alone enough to so greatly impact the ability to think? Or could the brain be deceiving itself in whether its vocalized thoughts are in fact complete English words?
Perhaps there's something to be seen from the fact that I find myself automatically inserting filler words even when trying to dictate these raw thoughts to a recording. I'm fairly sure I don't use them in my internal thoughts, and whenever I use one when dictating those thoughts, it feels like my train of thought comes to a halt. Perhaps, when I need to take time to consider something abstract that cannot be vocalized, my internal vocalization is able to pause without me noticing, but audible speaking reflexively fills in the silence in a manner disruptive to thinking?
This all contrasts with my writing of this comment, where my typing is far slower and more measured than my thinking, such that I'm jumping between sentences to insert new thoughts related to something I've already written and delete what now feels unimportant. And the process of handwriting is again different, being even slower and very limited in the ability to modify what's already written. I gather, then, that these are all distinct "modes" of the brain putting thoughts into language, each with different levels of perceived difficulty, actual words per minute, and resulting quality/linguistic register.
Edit: clarity
Yeah I sound like an idiot when I start talking because my brain will process thoughts much faster than I can speak them and it ends up with odd extended pauses while I catch up and such.
I don’t write particularly well either, often because I’m on a phone and my phone loves to make radical new words via autocorrect but at least I can read over a few times before posting.
Oh, unless it’s musical. Then it’s music. But I can visualize that too.
When I shut down my internal monologue I have trouble thinking about things beyond routine procedures and memories.
The "3 Av/E 117 St" part is a fact I have to memorize with some mnemonic. I think when I was young I would have been able to see it on the street sign, but my eidetic memory gets worse each year, and I'm pretty old.
You don't work with that as a single packet, it is just many tidbits of information. I learned you have a nephew, that you haven't seen this nephew before, that you never visited that place, that you promised to meet them at a specific location. So you add all of those things to your brain, that is equivalent to the sentence.
Storing that as a single sentence instead of breaking it up and storing the chunks seems inefficient, how is your brain supposed to find information like "when was the first time X visited 3Av/E117 st?" when you haven't filed it properly? And if your brain files the information properly, why do you need that sentence?
The recent cache can find those sentences, but your long term memories wont find it without proper indexing, you will forget a lot of things if you try remembering everything like that.
My personal experience is similar to GP. My thoughts are very non-linear a jumble of images, emotions, sensations, sounds, colors, and intuitions. Organization into anything resembling a coherent sentence takes conscious effort.
But there are words mixed into that jumble somewhere, and I experienced a tipping point during language immersion / acquisition where I realized those words were no longer in my native tongue. It was around the time I started dreaming in the other language.
It could be related to your dopamine regulation or to anything traumatizing which happened to you in the past that you haven't fully integrated yet. Out of curiosity does this seem like a possibility?
Suppose as you were growing up you and your feelings were always invalidated. You may have learned to try to repress them. But I hear that when we try to quiet our feelings they only get louder. The limbic system is said to want emotions. If you trained yourself to push down your feelings instead of e.g. inviting them with curiosity then they don't just disappear.. you may need to relate to them in an emotionally welcoming/safe state in order to resolve them. But it can be scary if you never felt safe feeling your own feelings, e.g. due to what may have been modeled for you by a parent.
Not only that, my internal voice has become much quieter with age. And I have learned more and more extroverted behaviors during the same time.
I’m the same in that respect, but I grew up bilangually, so I always wondered if that has caused my brain to think more independently of language than other people. On the other hand, I spend a lot of time mulling in my head what I will say/write to other people, which results in a lot of internal monologue.
This has been my experience as I've learned to stop thinking in words. I realized at one point that words are learned; which means that there was a point where you were thinking without them, before you learned language.
I've done a lot of work on myself with therapy and meditation and learned to think without words. And what I've noticed is that when I think with words, they occur AFTER what I'd call sensational thinking; thinking without words is a full-body sensational experience for me and not something that only occurs in a slice of the mind like a vapid calculation.
>mind chatter
A few times I've experienced acting without any chatter. A pure quietness. It's wonderful.
I've been working on myself to make this a permanent thing.
I'm a very 'verbal' thinker, but not all thoughts and mental processes are verbalised by a long shot. In fact it's probably a small minority, but a very noticeable one so it sometimes seems like a dominant mode when on reflection it really isn't. Much of the time it's more like a post-hoc commentary.
I often think things through verbally when I'm working through a tricky problem or issue, but even then I'm not sure to what extent the verbalising is post-hoc construction. I suspect there's a kind of feedback loop in those cases where the mental model is essentially unconscious, it's output is processed to generate a verbalisation, that process imposes a kind of structure and grammatical formalisation of the idea or thought, and that informs further modification of the model.
I've often said, and head it said, that if you have a tricky problem it helps to find someone and explain the problem to them. Often by the time you've explained it, you've figured out the solution. Having to structure the problem in such a way that you can explain it is a kind of analytical discipline that helps think it through. For me verbalising internally is helpful in that way, but it's not the only way I think. If it were playing reaction sports that require some strategising and analysis of your opponent's moves would be impossible because it would be too slow.
I don‘t know why i wrote this, but your „mind-chatter“ and „white noise“ made me think here is a good place to jump in and see if anyone has anything to say to this… don‘t know… i am just exhausted…
Fwiw, while i do imagine thinking in words is slower than non-words, i myself have an inner monologue and it is far from... structured when typically active while i'm thinking. It sounds much more like the mutterings of an insane person. Ie while i'm chewing on a problem the majority of my thoughts are without form - but sprinkled in between them are voiced words. Sometimes a run of words, sometimes a single word, often nothing at all.
Similarly while i think best when i talk out loud to myself, what i verbally express are structured quite similar to my inner voice ramblings. They are trains of thought weaving back and forth almost without meaning. Large gaps of jumps, usually cutting myself off mid sentence.
> I think there might be some correlation between this and being introverted, socializing is exhausting for me because the translator is not well trained as I don't use it while thinking, and it has to run at 100%. I've talked with my better half about this and she said it's easy for her because the sentences are already there and it takes zero effort to say them, which aligns with my theory.
I struggle immensely with socializing as well. Unsure if it's related, but i tend to talk _too_ much. It's like i always push the conversation, and i have to fight not to talk. That or i forget my points/etc. Despite talking heavily, i dislike most socialization. I often leave conversations wishing i had said nothing.
Verbal is usually when mulling over options, like what to get for dinner.
Same thing.
Say, how to go from place A to place B, if you've never travelled that route. But you know how things are laid out. Some people really struggle with this by the way.
The verbalized "thoughts" come after the fact. They thought already exists and then you put it into words to yourself. The verbalization can be confused for thinking.
It would be like your Operating System thinking that it performed the computations it needed to show this web browser on your screen without the help of the CPU.
I can definitely relate more to the way you described your mind than to the usual "inner voice". But I suspect it's the same for all people, they just subconsciously abstract it in another way.
I suspect a similar confusion happens when people talk about aphantasia. But I haven't really put in the work to discover how serious the research around these things is.
The "inner voice" is absolutely a real voice, as real as my own; and it's not necessarily the only voice. The voices are not auditory hallucinations—they are very distinctly discernible from sounds I'd hear with my ears.
I have learned how to think without this voice and I prefer doing so immensely, as the voice is akin to vapid calculation, while thinking without it is a sensational experience with feelings and is a much more enjoyable experience, extending beyond the location of where I hear the inner voice and goes as far experiencing sensation throughout my entire body; this sensation can be as vivid as physical touch.
In fact the voice is slower than sensational thinking. It occurs after the sensational thinking and the sensational thinking rarely can occur at the same time as the voice; they very easily become mutually exclusive and the inner voice tends to be the one that dominates.
I hope to reverse this relationship with continued work. Thinking without an inner voice is a much more enjoyable life for me.
I just mean the idea itself is absurd. Obviously nothing in your mind is making sounds.
If you just mean "imagining sounds" I would still question what it actually means.
Maybe they're both the same thing (inner monologue that makes imagined sounds, vs inner monologue that doesnt make imagined sounds)
I can tell the difference, because I can easily imagine voices too, it's like remembering them, but you make them say something else :)
But normally my "inner monologue" is voiceless.
I find this most frustrating in work that is interrupted and explanation is sought. So for example, if I'm thinking through the most efficient way to accomplish X, taking into accounty Y and Z, and someone walks into my office and asks me what I'm working on it's frustrating stating my thought process on the spot because none of that reasoning was assembled using language.
What are others experience with this?
For some of us it's quite literal, and goes by the term subvocalization.
I know that I, for one, when speaking to myself, sometimes am doing it through little breathy throat quasi-vocalizations, like I'm beginning to say a word that I'm mentally saying.
I wonder at my ability to carry on an internal mental monolog without it.
We still teach children to read aloud, and it takes a bit of effort for them to switch over to reading silently, often with an intermediate phase of silently moving the lips.
How do you articulate speech? With me, the concepts in my mind just turn into vocalized words. It's note even an effort, it just happens when I want to speak. Like my thoughts move the muscles in my arms. I don't know how and I am surprised that my line of thought rarely stumbles and doesn't produce the correct words. I think it should be some kind of effort to turn that wordless cloud of abstract thoughts and concepts into words but it just isn't.
I do have vocalization when I'm reading or when I'm preparing a text (like this one I'm just writing). But this is just to get the phrases and wordings the way I like them to be with the right effect.
Seems we go from reading out loud, to reading in our heads (internally-vocalising), but you can continue and read without the internal-vocalisation. I can do it a bit, but under test conditions I only picked up about half of what I would do when I read to myself in my head.
Amazing how different people's headspaces are.
I can supress the vocalising with a bit of conscious effort but it's not the vocalising that limits my reading speed. It's all the rest that goes on in my mind that processes the information I just read. If I'm looking for some specific words, not vocalising is helpful but if I need to remember and understand the text I'm reading, I do vocalising as that doesn't impact the rest that goes on in my mind.
So I'm not a speedreader but it did help me to improve my glancing skills and if I need to I can count really fast now by visualizing the numbers turning into each other.
For me it's all visual / mechanical, kind of like playing with Legos. No 'inner voices' are involved; though sometimes I will sort of internally mutter to myself, 'okay, let's get to work' at the start. For example if I read the word 'seventy-two' I visualize the decimal numbers '72' as an image.
I read a lot of scientific and technical literature, and I've found that trying to verbalize it isn't of much use and just leads to confusion. In contrast, I will 'hear voices' when reading a work of fiction but only when it's dialogue.
This could explain a lot about why some people learn certain stuff faster than others. For example, maths encoded into language is just a set of meaningless rules you have to memorize, but when you process it in concept-space the ideas behind maths make so much more sense. So, if you have someone who processes stuff mainly through language, their speed of learning math is significantly slower than someone who processes them in concept-space.