Rummaging Through People's Minds: The Inner Voice


What's going on in there?
Verbal vs visual vs abstract
Over at Steve Novella's Neurologica blog, he posted an interesting article on what goes on in people's heads when they think to themselves. People tend to think in terms of an inner voice, visual images and/or abstract feelings. It's rather an odd thing to think about. How does one perceive one's own consciousness, if that's what awareness of personal thinking is.

Novella writes:
The post [a Tweet] was intriguing to many people mostly because they had not considered that other people may be different in this respect than they are. It was not a variable they thought could differ among people. The episode brings up a few interesting points, the first of which is the core question – how do people think? If you have never considered the question, consider it now. Do you actually “hear” a virtual voice in your head? Do you think mostly in pictures, or in the abstract? Or is the mode of your thought very context dependent – depending on what you are thinking about or what task you are trying to complete. .... There are those who essentially have no verbal inner monologue. They are far to the visual end of the spectrum.

Having what seems to be only weak powers of metacognition (interoception?) at best, it took a while for me figure this out for myself. But even then, I'm not sure the answer is basically accurate or just nonsense. For me it seems my inner voice is about 85% abstract, unless the words that arise in my mind constitute a voice with no recognizable auditory characteristics that I'm aware of. In that case maybe it's about 85% verbal. Not much visual going on up there among the neurons most of the time. I have to work hard to conjure images.

Here's some Tweetage on the matter:
Comment: Fun fact: some people have an internal narrative and some don't. As in, some people's thoughts are like sentences they “hear”, and some people just have abstract non-verbal thoughts, and have to consciously verbalize them. And most people aren't aware of the other type of person. 
Response: Wait so some people don't have to suffer through the voice in their head going on a constant monologue?? Is that what it means to achieve inner peace??

What kind of mind is yours?

(Authored by Germaine)

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