470
TIL that some people do not have an inner voice and think in different nonverbal ways.
(humanities.ku.dk)
this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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Wait, do people have an actual vocalized inner monologue every time they think?
Every time?
No.
Easy example; picture an item in your head. Now flip it.
No language necessary or really even applicable.
But to learn that some people never have an inner dialogue...? That sounds so weird.
Some people can’t picture an item in their head, or can barely do so and wouldn’t be able to flip it.
Yeah complete aphantasia is crazy.
The point is that no-one does that sort of thinking with language, as it's not really applicable.
I was really confused when you said picture an object then flip it. When people say picture something I always assumed that was a way to say think about the thing. I guess because I can think about things, obviously, but I can’t picture them. Their wouldn’t be a thing for me to flip if someone asked me to picture an object which left me wondering, wtf do you mean flip it.
Picture a teapot. Picture it turning over so you can see the other side. Sort of like that.
I guess my point is that I can’t picture something in that way. Picturing a green apple vs a red apple. I don’t actually visualize anything. I can think ok it’s a sour apple or sweet apple but I don’t have a visual to modify. The teapot I would just be thinking ok the teapot is upside down, theirs nothing I can visualize that would change. I have tried really hard, especially when I miss loved ones, I wish I could bring about images of them in my mind really badly.
I feel that on the faces. It's really upsetting.
Faces are hard for me too, but not impossible. It's like AI. It's easy to get a "teapot" but it takes more work and focus to get a specific individual.
guess the upside of it is is that if you see something traumatic you can't revisualize it?
some things can't be unseen doesn't apply for everyone? must be nice
Maybe. One way to process trauma is to re-visit it until it becomes more familiar and less of an extreme experience. Seeing it in your mind may make it more real, but it also means you can just picture a teapot instead if you need to get away from it.
Thaaaaat's not how trauma works. If you could just distract yourself, the trauma wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.
The problem is being forced to relive a horrible memory despite your will or not.
I love how we are all here talking about how we all think and perceive differently and you decided it was important to tell me that the way I process trauma isn't real. You can go ahead and fuck right off.
Nice reply man, super polite. You process trauma in whatever way best suits you, but... You're making the claim that is essentially "if you're bothered by traumatic memories, you can just stop thinking about them" which is reductive and simplistic as fuck, and above all very much objectively wrong.
People who are bothered by images from traumatic memories can't just choose to "picture a teapot instead if you need to get away from it." That's. Not. How. Trauma. Works.
Hey, I don't have to be polite to people who try to invalidate my life experience. Don't tell me how I work.
Feel free to tell me how YOU work, but telling me that "it doesn't work that way" when it obviously does for me doesn't make your experience somehow universal.
Also, this is the Internet, if you can't handle some people not being polite then I have bad news for you...
Nope. Don't have that skill.
i can imagine textures and tastes and stuff and geometry relatively complex but when i try to imagine colors all i get is a flat color diagram or an empty room with only one colour
it's wack, shits even weirder when you dream.
My dreams often get retconned into the real world, unless my brain immediately determines them to be bullshit. Which is uh, unsettling.
oh my friend, you have made the most relevant mistake in the book, may i introduce you to aphantasics? People who are incapable of visualizing something in their mind.
It's hard to describe for me. Cuz I don't actually "see" anything I try to imagine. If I close my eyes and try to visualize say an image of a desk at a window all I see is darkness. The image exists, I can I guess I'd say "feel" it there and i could even draw it. But I can't "see" it. Like the part of me that's making the picture is drawing it on a live stream but the part of me that should be seeing the stream has the monitor off.
Same with the whole internal monologue thing. I don't "hear" the words in my head or "see" them written out in my imagination but I kinda just "feel" them there. It poses a problem when my mind really gets going because there will be often like half a dozen different distinct thoughts I can feel in there. So I end up having to talk to myself out loud in order to keep from losing whatever thread I'm trying to follow.
i like to separate it between visualizing something, and conceptualizing something, because if someone says a visualize a sphere, you know what a sphere is, you simply don't need to visualize it in order to conceptualize what it should look like, thus leading to a "pseudo image"
but if someone were to say visualize the tread pattern of an all weather tire, you probably wouldn't be able to do that very well, since you likely don't have a very solid conceptual understanding of what it looks like.
Yeah, those things are still almost entirely word-baaed for me. Low level aphantasia, I can't form a very clear picture in my head, but my inner monologue does a lot of lifting.
Apparently. I first learned about this last year when a co-worker told me to listen to my inner voice. I said, " oh yeah, like Sybil or Jiminy cricket?" I thought she was kidding. Then I thought she was crazy. Then 2/3 of my office said they hear it too. People who hear don't believe that other people don't, and vice versa. People are always trying to trick me into saying I hear something by asking me how I know the sound of my husband's voice or recognize a song, or get a song stuck in my head. When I have a song stuck in my head it's just the urge to sing it and there's no music. I can recognize actors by their voice sometimes, but I cannot do impressions or accents at all!
you can't recognize voices without an internal monologue? I see no reason that shouldn't be a thing people would even consider. Voices are like identifying unique patterns. They're incredibly easy, and we're trained to do it from birth. Similar thing for songs, although in that case i think it's more a sense of auditory "muscle memory" as the auditory experience illicits previously excited paths through the brain, leading to the same experience as last time, which allows you to define it independently.
I can't look at text without my inner voice reading it to me
I can come up with answers or solutions to problem without it, but it's there for a lot of stuff.
Sometimes yes, like right now. I can sense myself saying the words I want to type in my head. Its really like a voice talking to you but I can hear what the sentence will sound like if I read it out loud.