Internal monologues: some people don't have them

[Laird]

I'm not sure this qualifies strictly as consciousness "science", but it is at least something of an "investigation", and I'm not sure where else to put it. I found it interesting anyhow.

Guy Finds Out Not Everyone Has An Internal Monologue With Themselves And It Ruins His Day

My day was completely ruined yesterday when I stumbled upon a fun fact that absolutely obliterated my mind. I saw this tweet yesterday that said that not everyone has an internal monologue in their head. All my life, I could hear my voice in my head and speak in full sentences as if I was talking out loud. I thought everyone experienced this, so I did not believe that it could be true at that time. Literally the first person I asked was a classmate of mine who said that she can not “hear” her voice in her mind. I asked her if she could have a conversation with herself in her head and she looked at me funny like I was the weird one in this situation. So I began to become more intrigued. Most people I asked said that they have this internal monologue that is running rampant throughout the day. However, every once in a while, someone would say that they don’t experience this.

some people's thoughts are like sentences they "hear", and some people just have abstract non-verbal thoughts, and have to consciously verbalise them.

I noticed at least one person said this:

"I can choose to think either way. But thinking without words is much faster."

That probably describes me. I've noted this as a problem since years ago, when I often have some very rich and interesting thought, but trying to verbalise it is a laborious task, at the very least it takes much longer than the original thought (a bit like typing a post on this forum, for example). But also it is problematic in that my vocabulary, and quite likely, the language itself, doesn't have words for the thoughts I'm having. Even worse, the process of verbalisation can both distort and even vaporise the original thought, a bit like bursting a bubble.

As for the inner monologue or even inner dialogue, I learned to turn it off through types of meditation. I think this is why some classes of meditation involve reciting a mantra, I'd suggest the aim here is to fill the verbal space and thus suppress the usual monologue. I prefer silence myself.

[Laird]

There's an article on this in the ABC, Most of us have an inner voice, but if you're part of the minority who doesn't, this could be why, the key part of which states:

So why don't some people have inner speech? Studies show that producing inner speech requires a network of brain activity spanning from the frontal lobe to auditory cortex, which is located near your ears.

These networks are the same as those used when we speak aloud (which also requires motor cortex, because we need to move our tongue, lips, etc.).

One theory proposes that people who do not produce inner speech are unable to activate those networks without also activating their motor cortex.

Another theory is poor introspection, which refers to a person's ability to examine their own mental processes.

According to this theory, everyone produces inner speech, but some people are conscious of it whereas others are not.

Or maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe it is possible that the absence of inner speech is the brain's default setting (do human infants, or animals, have inner speech?), and there might be something unusual about people who do have it.

Regardless, there might be a silver lining to not being able to produce inner speech.

For instance, inner speech might help us to solve problems, but it can also put us down, which can lead to the development of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and many other forms of mental illness.

That's interesting. Though it does seem incomplete.

Maybe it is possible that the absence of inner speech is the brain's default setting

Maybe, assuming it is a property of the brain, rather than inherent in consciousness. I have suggested elsewhere that one of the functions of the brain is to give us access to human language.

inner speech might help us to solve problems

Well, only to the extent that it is a tool for expressing things in terms of that language. The language of mathematics for example is useful in expressing things. But problem solving itself, there are probably many different factors - the old inspiration and perspiration idea. Some solutions may appear in a flash of insight, but putting them into practice requires work. Sometimes I visualise solutions as a type of three-dimensional structure, for want of a better analogy, again this can occur very rapidly, but laying it all out in linguistic terms, even if that language is a diagram rather than words, may take effort. The same problem I referred to in my previous post.

[Laird]

I'm just getting around to sharing this ABC News article which I read and flagged for posting when it came out:

UQ student Loren Bouyer lives with aphantasia, which means she can't visualise objects by Kenji Sato and Kate O'Toole on 14 October, 2023.

Ms Bouyer said if she thought of an ice cream, she could understand it conceptually and imagine the tactile experience, but would be completely unable to visualise it.

"I can imagine myself holding it, I can feel it running down my fingers, I can feel the stickiness, but I can't see it," she said.

"It's as though I'm blind."

In Ms Bouyer's case, her aphantasia extends to sounds, meaning she does not have an internal monologue — the proverbial voice in her head.

Ms Bouyer said she had found ways to work around her aphantasia.

When preparing a speech she said she memorised the mouth movements in lieu of an internal monologue.

When painting she said she had learned to copy an object down to the finest detail because she was unable to draw from memory.

In the embedded video interview, an interesting line of inquiry is raised: to what extent is this an inherent lack and to what extent is it malleable; can aphantasics be trained to visualise images and/or sounds?

I do have inner speech, but I remember as an undergraduate making a deliberate effort to solve a maths problem without talking to myself!

I sensed that it was a more efficient way to think, but I found it tiring to keep it up.

David

It strikes me that this phenomenon might be revelatory of the natural process of a human person (being a soul enmeshed in the brain and body), humanly unconsciously but motivated by higher soul consciousness trying to experience the bodiless spiritual means of communication native to spirit in the spiritual realm. This would be communication via sheer thought alone, far more efficient and able to communicate vastly more from the spiritual standpoint. Purely mental thought streams and musings would be viewed as actually instinctive and natural for the soul and something that the physical human needs to acquaint him/herself with and practice a little while in body, rather than to be overwhelmed by it after physical death. It being while in physical life an unexperienced and unaccustomed and alien form of communication. 

Experiencing periods of completely purely mental thought streams or musings while in body, rather than experiencing the deeply inculcated normal physical body mode of verbal language-based inner mental communications, would be viewed as a temporary while in body means of dropping verbal communication and getting used to communication by pure thought (in order to prepare for the upcoming natural modality after physical death). Perhaps even, the degree of this experiencing of pure inner thought streams could be considered a rough measure of the degree of spirituality of the person, or at least there could be a correlation. Or this could be a rough indicator of how prepared the human personality/soul is for physical death.

A fair amount of the previous post from nbtruthman seemed to take the line that particular ways of thinking were anomalous and perhaps primarily to prepare us for our own death. I'd like to suggest that they might also be considered as normal and an important part of this life. Living the present life ought to be at least somewhat relevant to a description of how people experience it, especially when we are considering a long-term, everyday activity.