Internal Monologue Debate

I don't know if I'm part of a minority, but I have no internal monologue or dialogue unless I explicitly decide to have one.My default thinking mode is in abstract concepts, having to put it into words feels like a downgrade in the speed at which I can think.

"The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought."This is interesting to me. When I'm working on something difficult I often find my thought process to be very "verbal." Kind of like an internal monologue, talking myself through the problem. It's fascinating to think that my mental experience might be so profoundly different from someone else's.

I have an internal monologue and I struggle to imagine how someone can think without one. Yet I also wonder if bypassing the need to articulate thoughts in words is actually more efficient. Do those people have a higher thought throughput? I suspect we may never know.

I think with words, in multiple languages, but they're silent. I can't actually hear anything. Importantly though, the verbalizing is a later stage of thinking. First there is the thought, seemingly instant, non-verbalized, and fuzzy. If needed, I can already act based on that thought without verbalizing. However if I verbalize it in my head, then that allows for further analysis that may lead me to override the initial guessed value of the thought. Not everything can be verbalized eas

If I am thinking about how to express a complex idea in writing or speech, I’ll certainly have an “internal monologue.”But if I’m just thinking about something myself, my thoughts just exist as abstract thoughts that aren’t tied to language. My brain is constantly thinking, but I’m not thinking in English!I could express the same sort of disbelief you did - I can’t imagine how slow and inefficient it must be to have to do all your thinking in terms of words as opposed just operating on the

I have Dysgraphia[1]. I don't think in words, without conscious effort to translate my thoughts into words. I don't have an inner monologue unless I'm trying to think of how to put my thoughts into words (or otherwise thinking with language, eg pretending to narrate what's going on around me). It takes me conscious effort to use written language, and a bit less effort for verbal language; I essentially have permanent writer's block.This person seems to think that ever

Interesting. I hear words when reading but not when thinking -- unless specifically walking myself through an impending dialog or how to compose a written communication.

Someone deaf and blind still form thoughts but don’t output them in words. Words follow cognition, it’s sometimes obvious when you have a clear concept in mind but forget the word.Edit: also when programming, I form mental structures and code them without verbalizing them, same with maths or when drawing or making music. A thought is maybe a prediction, but language seems not to be the abstraction it’s operated on.

This is getting more confusing. Just because you can think in words doesn’t mean you enumerate everything in words. I think of myself as someone with an inner voice that I use often but not everything that happens in my mind is subvocalized. A lot of it is imagining or recalling images or movements, there’s spatial awareness when thinking about positioning things and manipulating objects, there are non verbal recollections like music or recalling a sound something made and there are thoughts tha

Sometimes I do have internal monologue (although I cannot actually hear it) and sometimes it isn't. And sometimes I don't know the words for what I think of. When reading English writing it is a kind of pronouncing, but if it is Chinese (or other ideographic kind of language) then it isn't. When thinking of my own stuff is again different from this. (English is the only language I can write/speak well; the others I am not so good at.)