How do people without one form thoughts, then? Without using words???
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I’m not sure if I have inner monologue or not. I know I have mild or severe aphantasia regarding images.
When I’m reading/writing something, there is an inner monologue, like I’m talking out loud each word, just like now while I’m typing this. But let’s say I intend to break some bad news to my wife. There is no inner monologue on how I plan to do it, but I will rehearse it beforehand, trying to predict exactly what words I will say and her reaction. There is an inner monologue when I do that, I will speak with my voice the words and speak with my wife’s voice her probable words. To be clear, I read in other people’s answers when this question was asked and people say it’s like another voice telling them stuff, like it’s someone else and not themselves. That’s not what happens to me. I’m just “vocalizing” what I will say or hear, nothing more.
Now, when it comes to things not related to reading/writing or talking/listening, there is no voice at all (at least I think so). I will conjure up images or “playbacks” of whatever I’m thinking about and vocalize my thoughts sometimes, like putting post-its on some pile of papers to identify them and make sense of them, but I won’t, for example, think about buying another CPU and vocalize to myself “I should buy another CPU”. I just think about it, no voices at all. I can’t explain it better.
Maybe if I explain how my aphantasia manifests it will be more clear for those reading this: when I read something, like the description of Kvothe in The Name of the Wind, I form a very fleeting image of my interpretation of that description. There is no movement, not like a video. It doesn’t last more than a second or two. It’s very… misty, and with washed colors. It’s like you are somewhere very dark, no moon, no stars, and there is fog/mist all around you. You can’t see even the mist, except when a lightning bolt flashes the sky for a fraction of a second and a flash of your surroudings burn into your retina for a second. That is how I form images. When I try to manipulate an image in 3 dimensions, like for example right now I’m trying to rotate an apple in my mind, what happens is a series of flashes, each with a slight different angle of the apple in sequece, like a really slow movie, or better yet, like a fast moving power point presentation. But there is no motion per se, not in a continuous way like a video. It’s hard to explain. It’s like explaining how I see the color red.
Sorry if I could’t clarify. Still, I’m not sure if I have inner monologue or not.
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