How do some people think/speak inside their head while others can’t?

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How do some people think/speak inside their head while others can’t?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Damn this is the most fascinating thing I’ve seen on Reddit, which is saying something. Anyone at all got any links to neuroscientists who have studied this? And if not, dammit they need to study this. I do know there are some fascinating brain sciency things that are different across cultures, I wonder if this is one of them? Someone do some research on this!

Anonymous 0 Comments

To those curious about the neuroscience of language and how the brain develops it (or doesn’t), I would highly recommend Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct. Here are a couple of fascinating tidbits from the first few chapters that I’ve read, as best I can recall them (most on-topic point at the end):

– Language is a preprogrammed and organic thing, down to general grammatical requirements or standards. Languages have common features because much of how it can work is hard coded into our brain’s development as we grow up. Smaller variations are arbitrary or conventional.

– The English Language isn’t particularly optimal or even normal in some ways – many languages have second person plurals, for instance, like “you’s” in black English vernacular.

– Black English Vernacular (BEV) is considered an entirely valid dialect by linguists and has its own distinct rules and constructions. What sounds like “bad” English to a stuffy Brit like me is, in fact, just another language, functionally superior to mine in some ways. Once you realise this, the entire concept of enforcing a “correct” version of a language goes out the window, and the world of language becomes a daunting kaleidoscope of endless variation and evolution.

– Kids do not need to be drilled in language to learn it. Some cultures don’t talk to their kids at all, and those kids automatically spring into language use at the same stages as ours. It’s an organic, programmed routine and doesn’t require any intervention beyond simply surrounding your kid with the sounds of language once they start to acquire it, so they have something to absorb like a sponge. They’ll do the rest themselves. Pinker compares to those same cultures having a bizarre convention of trying to “teach” kids to sit upright with supports made of sand, where we simply wait for them to do it on their own. They daren’t risk not doing it, just as we daren’t risk not “teaching” our infants words, even though it is entirely pointless.

– The hardware in our brains that makes language work is involuntary and will latch onto whatever is available. “Second generation” sign language users, deaf children taught sign by parents who learned it as a second language out of necessity, quickly and automatically develop it to a far greater degree and embellish it with grammatical features and sophistications their parents didn’t use. They do this without instruction or prompting, building a full language from the pidgin framework their parents taught them. The same thing happens with pidgin languages generally. A pidgin is a sort of make-do shorthand that dislocated people develop to function without a common language, but in every case, their children take the pidgin (which typically has very limited vocab, grammar and scope) and evolve it into a fully fledged language within one generation. This is how BEV originated – the post-slavery pidgin of dislocated people stuck without a common language, grown into its own language by their children and grandchildren, hence it sounding mostly like the English they were surrounded by and forced to acquire, but with its own original grammar, vocab and constructions.

– Language does not shape or precede thought. Pinker devotes a large chunk of a chapter to debunking the popular myth that our language confines and structures our thinking: eskimos have [large number] of words for snow, and so on (that particular one is such a widely debunked myth that it’s worth googling and reading about on its own). It’s backwards nonsense. Thought precedes language: as he points out, how else could we have the universal experience of sometimes struggling to find the right word for something? The thought must exist first. Language is a utilitarian function that comes afterwards, and is somewhat optional. My own note on this: internal verbalising is a habit, but it can break. When I’ve spent a long time alone, absorbed by physical work, it gradually shuts down and I begin thinking nonverbally. The work thought process is the same sort of stuff – “this must go here, those will be over there, this is in the way, that doesn’t look right” – but there is no monologue attached to it in words. The exact content of that thought is impossible to describe afterwards because, well, it’s nonverbal. When in company or working with others, I revert to verbal thinking, and I do find it “unlocks” certain kinds of mental abstraction and makes certain kinds of work easier. Nonverbal thinking is better at certain other kinds of work. Once you get used to the switch, it’s quite useful to be able to flip back and forth: gardening and DIY are more relaxed and natural without a monologue, while essay writing like this is definitively impossible without one.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m confused.

Are you under the impression that some people are incapable of…thinking?

That’s what your question implies.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’ve gone down this particular rabbit hole before with some friends, later did some research and discovered that I am considered highly abnormal because I can literally turn my inner monologue on and off mostly at will. When I read I always have a monologue, but no distinctive voices, just one that does not sound like my own voice. In any other situation I can choose if my brain thinks with a “voice” or just visuals or what I call “impressions” which I have no way to describe. Sometimes the switch is involuntary, but if I think about it I control it, like breathing or blinking. Dreaming is visual, and people speak but I don’t “hear” they’re voices, I just instinctively understand what they mean. My dreams are always 100% silent even when people in them speak. Not necessarily related but I also often dream in the 3rd person (watching myself) although I never look like what I do IRL, and often dream I am the opposite gender. When I dream in the first person I can always see my own body, including my hands, and I never speak in dreams, others infer my meanings as I infer theirs.

Anonymous 0 Comments

So while you all are reading these comments to yourselves, are you hearing your inner voice reading them? I am

Anonymous 0 Comments

Im guessing that people who are more sociable and talk more often wouldn’t really need to think speak so they just don’t, and people who do think speak talk less or listen to conversation less so to make themselves not bored they speak to themselves but in their head so no one else hears and it is less effort.

This is just me guessing. I could be incorrect.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m tripping so hard now to think that some people don’t think in word-speak in their heads.

Anonymous 0 Comments

This is so bizarre. I totally have a monologue, but some of you that don’t seem to think we only think in words. Not true at all, I at least think in words and visuals. The same for dreams, I see people and we talk together, just like the waking world. Is there anyone who ONLY thinks in words?

Anonymous 0 Comments

I think it’s possible that thinking is unnecessary, only needing to be used when elaborating on things. The brain is similar to a neural network, if you think about something the pathway is given more priority. I believe that thought is what allows you to choose a lower priority pathway. Without thought, you immediately follow the highest priority pathway, which is usually the correct pathway to follow. If I said think about a chicken, you probably have a good idea immediately. If I said think about the feathers of a chicken and apply them to the thought of a chicken, I’ve then led you down a new pathway which you likely haven’t followed if you aren’t an artist or something of the sort. People with less exposure to conversation likely are the people who can have inner monologue because people with a high exposure to conversation immediately find the words they want to say, simply because they’ve been down the pathway a million times. If you are kept up at night by a reoccurring memory, ask yourself, how many times at the point of that memory had you gone through the same or similar situation? The chances are slim that you’d done the same or similar thing a million times over and it remains a reoccurring memory.

tl;dr

people who don’t think in words are conversationalists, thinking is unnecessary, thinking allows you to choose whether you have an immediate response, if you haven’t thought about it before you don’t have an immediate answer

Anonymous 0 Comments

Is having or nor having internal monologue the norm? I thought everyone had it.

I also thought having verbal dialogue in dreams was normal. Next you’ll tell me most people don’t assign unique voices and accents to the comments they read in forums or characters in books.

FYI, 90% of redditors have a 18th century British Accent.