As newborn babies do not yet know how to speak a language, what is their internal dialogue when they think to themselves?
In: Biology
Newborns can barely see a foot from their face. They don’t need to have thoughts. They just react to the stimulate around them. They quickly start to make sense of their environment but they don’t need an inner voice to do that.
That being said inner voices and language are important for children and adults. We can infer how important language and the inner voice is because deaf people who do not learn language will be significantly handicapped even though the brain of a deaf person is not different than that of a hearing person. Even if they only learn a spoke language they will fail to develop an inner voice and will still have some mental handicaps. Unfortunately we have a lot of information about this because for a long time people thought that it was better to only teach deaf people spoken language.
I like this quote from Helen Keller said “Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. (…) Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another.”
https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/how-deaf-people-think/
Latest Answers