Google gave me mostly AI slop and pop psychology, but this article is an in-depth summary of the literature on the topic of inner speech, for anyone interested (and dedicated - it’s long and very technical).
It doesn’t seem to justify dichotomizing people into those who “have it” and those who don’t. Research looks mostly focused on what cognitive or developmental purpose it serves.
Inner speech can be defined as the subjective experience of language in the absence of overt and audible articulation. This definition is necessarily simplistic: as the following will demonstrate, experiences of this kind vary widely in their phenomenology, their addressivity to others, their relation to the self, and their similarity to external speech.
So, it’s on a spectrum, highly subjective, and difficult to talk about with precision.
I personally do not normally think in words, but I certainly rehearse/relive conversations. I also complain to myself with words when I am really miserable, I think it’s comforting to “say it out loud” (inside). Do I have an inner monologue?
CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works 47 minutes ago
Tangentially related, but the fox game show “1% club” is, perhaps unintentionally, a fascinating demonstration of how vastly different people think through logic problems.
The premise is the contestants go through a series of questions already asked to a sample of Americans and progress in order of how “difficult” they are based on how many got them wrong.
The interesting part comes when there can be a significant gap in what I perceive the difficulty to be between questions. Sometimes I may have trouble with an “easy” one but get a significantly “tougher” one no problem.
It seems like lunacy to me, but all it really means most times is the format or mechanics of the logic needed for the answer is just more natural to me than the majority of the sample.