As per title, I am curious. How does your mind / your thoughts work? I only ever experienced my own thoughts, so I’m curious how it works for other people.
I for one feel like my thoughts sometimes are like me talking to myself silently. Sometimes I can even let out a random short sound, which I’ve come to start disguising by laughing kinda quietly or coughing or whatever. Like it was part of something, and not like an inner monologue almost leaking out.
So, how do your thoughts work?
Me to. It’s called Aphantasia (no minds eye, so some or no pics) and Anendophasia (No inner voice). For me my thoughts are “just there” almost impossible to explain.
I couldn’t understand what it’s like for people who actually see and hear things in their heads. I recently realized that I sometimes experience a faint taste and I guess it’s sort of like that?
I can taste food ok. Too ok, I seem to be some sort of super taster. Everything is to overpowering.
It scares me to think you could have pictures or movies in your head that you may not wish to have.
The way I explain it is: when you read, you don’t read the words aloud in your head. You look at them and register their meaning. My thoughts are just those meanings. Usually in larger chunks than single words though. They don’t have a language. I can ‘picture’ sounds I’ve heard before though, like getting a song stuck in my head. That one’s more difficult with pictures.
This is not a good explanation because as someone already pointed out a lot of (most?) people do “read the words aloud in their head”. For me, I often even make tiny moves of my tongue and larynx - see subvocalization.
Interesting, everyone I’ve told this to said that is indeed how they read!
Does reading something quietly take as long as reading something out loud for you? It’s hard to imagine!
If I’m actually reading with the goal of thorough understanding then it will take as long as reading it aloud or longer. I can still skim through the text faster, but I will understand less of it.
The Wikipedia article on subvocalization has a section on speed reading. It seems that subvocalizing can in fact limit the reading speed.
Thanks for the pointer, I’ll read the wiki!
Reading in my head certainly takes the same amount of time as reading out loud (occasionally with different voices for characters, as somebody else said).
If I read without doing that it’s a lot quicker but it doesn’t go in and I have to re-read it. My mind starts chatting away about something else rather than concentrating on the book.
Super interesting, cause for me it’s the opposite! If I try to read it out loud mentally, my mind is (I guess) understimulated and starts to wander, causing me to have to reread it.
Side question: if you give text a voice, what kind of a voice are you giving my comments here? Not just asking you specifically, but anyone who wants to answer!
Mostly it’s my own voice for comments 🙂, maybe a slight inflection. I don’t usually go overboard on the voices unless it’s somebody I know, or occasionally characters in books.
If I read out loud faster than certain limit the pronunciation becomes gibberish. Silent reading is much faster. OTOH when I read out loud, I focus on speech, my attention and hence understanding rate drops. So it takes even longer.
For complicated writing I sometimes even have to re read silently to understand the complete meaning.
Hm so it isn’t like reading it out loud, except in your head, after all?
I’m not sure tbh. It can be but often it feels I’m reading the meaning of a word and not pronouncing it in head. These can be misleading easily. Writing, yes.
Uuh, yes, yes I do read them aloud in my head.
Same. And depending on what I’m reading I’ll sometimes use a specific voice…
Like if I’m reading a text from a friend I’ll “hear” it in their voice. Or I’ll make up voices for characters in a novel.
When I get a song stuck (which happens constantly) I don’t hear it; I just have the unrelenting urge to sing it.
Interesting, hadn’t heard the term “anendophasia” before. I don’t have an inner voice either except when reading or writing. No aphantasia though.