For me, it's like the volume of my inner voice is decreased, and no sign of recovery after 2 years, though no significant cognitive function decline can be observed.
But sometimes, things come to my mind without talking at all, and it is usually more profound things, or things that trigger a more profound emotion. Regarding self-knowledge or when doing introspection, I confess that having a inner monologue is not effective at all, at least to me.
Can I ask how you "work" mentally? For instance, supposing you're a software developer, how do you go thorough learning a new thing about a programming language? I usually talk to myself things like "suppose I do this here, and..". It is like I am pair-programming with the other half of my brain.
Hope you don't mind me asking! Is just curiosity (and the fact that the inner monologue sometimes may do more harm than good)..
> "suppose I do this here, and.."
Sure, I will follow the same pattern, but the drive to fiddle with something bubbles up from some abstract place. Words don't even come into play.
Do you also subvocalize when reading text?
This topic is a fickle beast. The only baseline I have is my own cognition -- I can't say "yeah it's like what you're doing only..." -- I am fundamentally unable to experience your way of thinking. We are blobs of fat oxymoronically trying to explain our subjective experience in an objective way through our 2nd languages (lossy doesn't even beign to describe it). It's absurd but oh so fascinating.
I don't understand. Thought experiment:
You go to a wall and there is a picture hanging on the wall. You like the picture. Can you "say" in your head without using your voice/mouth "I like this picture"?
If you have to use your voice, can you mimic the tongue movement without moving your mouth and "hear" the words without making a sound?
I normally don't talk very much, maybe that's why? Maybe my though process is further removed from language than that of most other people?
If I appreciate a piece of art then it goes into my memory palace collection in a room that groups it together with other similar pieces of art that I had a similar appreciation for. As I appreciate the piece of art my memory palace branches out from there in many directions. I'm recalling other similar pieces of art (how does this art rank compared to other pieces I've appreciated). I'm recalling other pieces of art by the same artist (how did this art compare to their other works). I'm recalling similar artists of the time period (how did this work compare to art by contemporary artists). I'm imagining the techniques that were used to make the art, whether dramatic and physical (splashes of paint in a modern art piece) or precise and delicate (such as the fine brush strokes). This is the process of appreciation I feel.
Basically, the "I like this picture" is a very visual experience for me, not a vocal experience at all. If I did not like the picture then I just look at it, have an internal feeling of "meh" or "boredom" and do not put any effort into memorization or related recall and connectivity of the memory.
Yes, mentally say out loud is what I'm talking about. And sometimes it's a conscious effort as well, definitely. But it doesn't require much effort from my part. Well, it requires so little effort, that sometimes I catch my mind talking to itself, without the other part really listening. So, sometimes it is not a conscious effort. My reasoning is that maybe some of the thoughts seem to trigger some part of the brain that is used for vocabulary, and they express themselves "vocally" (but without any sound)..
> Do you also subvocalize when reading text?
When reading text, and now by replying to you. English is not my native language, so I must "vocalize" the words internally, and then write them as they "sound" in my brain. I've been doing this for such a long time that is feels quite natural to me. And when I'm less rusty (specially when talking), I tend to skip the "inner" voice and project directly to the "outer" voice. But it only happens when I'm having lots of conversations in English. I haven't been writing or talking in EN too much lately, so I have to use my inner voice as intermediate step. As for reading, most of the time I read using my "inner" voice, both for English as for Portuguese (which is my native language).
For other things that are less abstract, with a concrete real world appearance, I'm constantly visualizing the outcome like I'm looking at a picture or watching a movie. This also applies to the "things that come to my mind without talking", which you mention. They drift into appearance in my mind as images as well.