Just because you don’t have an inner monologue doesn’t mean you are incapable of thought, or showerthoughts if we’re getting specific
Up to half of the earth's population doesn't have an inner monologue, up to half of the earth has never had a shower thought
Submitted 2 weeks ago by HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
Mothra@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Correct, a lack of inner speech isn’t the same as an absence of thought
It just seems like a true shower thought requires a narration to get so incredibly off tangent that it amounts to more than a simple epiphany
Like Mitch Hedberg, he is a great example of someone who let their inner speech run free
Mothra@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
I’d still argue against that. I’ve had one true showerthought and it didn’t manifest as monologue, even though I do have an internal monologue. I had a concept and images for it. I spent some time trying to put it into words.
I still don’t see how a showerthought (or any thought) has to have a verbal origin in the thinker’s mind; I would argue any internal monologue is but a secondary step after a thought has occurred. I’ve never heard of anyone being unable to predict what their own internal monologue is saying, and I’ve never heard of anyone being unable to make quick decisions because they had to first hear a command in their minds.
SPRUNT@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Conservatives explained.
kirkoman@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
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?
SassyRamen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You just described how you monologue like a villian in your head, so yeah you’re monologueing xD
Lemminary@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A spectrum is what I’m thinking. Some people can turn it on or off at will. Complete silence or make it yap yap yap. At least that’s my case.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I process thoughts visually, as typed text. It’s like a fucking ticker tape when I get going having random thoughts and I definitely experience shower thoughts.
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I refuse to believe this statistic. The only way to study this is by asking people and I bet most simply aren’t aware that they do have it. I didn’t pay much attention to it either untill I started meditating and now I’m painfully aware of it.
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In addition to in-depth interviews, one of the primary methods used in the study was for volunteers to carry a timer that would go off randomly and they were to journal what they were thinking at the time
The thoughts of someone without an inner monologue are not the same as someone with an inner monologue
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
That’s still just asking people, which isn’t exactly the most scientific method. If you were to stop me and ask what I was thinking, a lot of the time I wouldn’t be able to tell you - but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking. Thinking without being consciously aware of it is basically what I’m doing all day, every day. It’s mostly when I try to just be and let the world come to me that I become aware of how quickly I get lost in thought.
MinorLaceration@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Do people without an inner monologue “hear” the words they read as they read them?
modeler@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Many people do not hear as they read. In fact the skill of speed-reading depends on turning the auditory experience off:
There are three types of reading:
- Subvocalization: sounding out each word internally, as reading to oneself. This is the slowest form of reading.
- Auditory reading: hearing out the read words. This is a faster process.
- Visual reading: understanding the meaning of the word, rather than sounding or hearing. This is the fastest process.
Subvocalization readers (Mental readers) generally read at approximately 250 words per minute, auditory readers at approximately 450 words per minute and visual readers at approximately 700 words per minute. Proficient readers are able to read 280–350 wpm without compromising comprehension.
MinorLaceration@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nice. I’m definitely in the auditory reading category. I tend to just pick out the key words in a sentence when I am trying to read faster.
Matriks404@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I do in monotonous “voice”, yeah. Unless I know what voice somebody could have, then I use that voice instead.
SolidShake@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t believe it
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You don’t have to. It’s a thoroughly researched study, your belief in its existence is irrelevant.
Acamon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think you are completely misrepresenting the literature in the field. There has been decades of research on inner monologues, but whether anyone truly has no inner monologue is still a matter of debate, and suggesting that it could be as much as 50% is absolutely wild.
One recent example is Nedergaard and Lupyan (2024), who used questionnaires on 1,037 participants and found no one who reported a complete lack of inner speech. They did show a link between lower frequency of internal speech and lower performance on sole verbal cognitive tasks.
But this was frequently misreported in popular science news, which may be where you got the idea. For example, Science Daily’s headline “People without an inner voice have poorer verbal memory” and subheading “Between 5-10 per cent of the population do not experience an inner voice” certainly make some bold claims (although still well below your “up to 50%” statistic). But just a few lines into the article it’s been rephrase as “between 5-10 per cent of the population do not have the same experience of an inner voice”. This is more accurate, as all studies agree that there is a variety of experiences of inner voices / monologues, but a different experience is not the same as an absence.
In another comment you make reference to the experience sampling study (where a buzzer would sound and participants would record whether they were experiencing an inner monologue) which I assume is the work of Heavey and Hurlburt. It’s true that they claim that 5 of their 30 participants recorded no instances of inner voice, but let’s be clear about what the experimental procedure was: the participant would turn on the buzzer, which would buzz at a random time (an average of every 30 minutes) and the study was based on two periods of five samples. So, ten data points collected over approx five hours.
Even people with strong inner monologues report different frequencies of inner speech depending on their activities. Many people do not experience inner speech when actively engaging in other verbal activity - talking with friends, watching a video; while quiet focused activities such as golf show much higher reporting of inner speech. So the absence for five individuals of any inner speech during those ten particular samples is in no sense equievlant to “16% of peole have no inner monologue”. Indeed even the study’s authors acknowledge “it is possible that these participants may all have actually had quite similar inner experiences; it is merely the reports of those experiences that differed.”
Tldr: I think you’re making some very wild claims about this subject, without posting sources. No significant study I know of claims that any sizable percentage of the population have no inner voice, (although there certainly is an interesting variety in how frequent and clearly it is experienced.)
Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Internal monologue is entirely a subjective experience, and I don’t think there’s any other way to study it than by asking people. Just because someone isn’t consciously aware of it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just like if we asked people whether they have a blind spot in their visual field, everyone would say no - and everyone would be wrong.
JackLSauce@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I distinctly recall thinking inner monologues were a “neat idea” after seeing them on TV as a child and thinking it would be a useful skill to learn. I never did though
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I was today years old when I learned that not many people don’t have an inner monologue. The human body is so fascinating.
Oddly enough, if I don’t take my ADHD meds, I tend to talk to myself out loud a lot because my inner monologue gets kind of “muffled” in the “noise” and I rely on it very heavily to think through.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
when I learned
You didn’t learn anything…
You saw a random social media post and instantly believed what it said
What the fuck is wrong with people?
HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Maybe other people have read this research before as I have
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with them
CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks 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.
HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I for once have an outer monologue. Makes for awkward moments whenever my SO hears me…
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is it just quiet all the time?
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nah, I get background music because I don’t need “sound” for my thoughts. Generally it’s nice, sometimes it’s baby shark
Lemminary@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sometimes it’s only baby shark D:
Matriks404@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, but if it’s too loud in the real world I stop thinking oddly enough, and in many cases I am not able to speak clearly. That might be an autistic trait though.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Maybe its cause they have baths?
njm1314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Buddy you can just think out loud in the shower, nobody will stop you. For that matter you can think I got a lot pretty much anywhere, though you do get looks in the grocery store I find.
200ok@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I can’t tell whether I’m envious or scared
A7thStone@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Up to as much as more than half of all people.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, my bottom half also doesn’t have an inner dialogue.
GooberEar@lemmy.wtf 2 weeks ago
I think it’s more than half, and I think the other half just touches themselves in private areas too taboo to mention on a Christian oriented site like Lemmy. Let’s just say, stay away from the devil’ jewels kiddos.
Mothra@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
You’re in the right lemmy instance I see
Krejall@ttrpg.network 2 weeks ago
I have an inner monologue but it’s on like a half-second delay behind the actual thought. Like, I can picture a pineapple without thinking of the word pineapple first. Sometimes an entire sentence worth of meaning will form in an instant but the words don’t come until I’m trying to speak or type the thought out. Sometimes I can’t access a word at all, even though the concept is clear in my head and I know there is a specific word for this specific flavor of the concept.
Also, I can’t rotate a cube in my mind’s eye, but I can rotate a chicken.
Brains are weird.
teft@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Lack of inner monologue doesn’t mean lack of thoughts. People without an inner monologue just don’t think in words. They can still think up concepts and ideas like everyone else.
LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Image
Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
As someone with an inner monologue, how do they think?
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I don’t really have an inner monologue unless I very intentionally think in words. Otherwise I just think in thoughts. 🤷♀️
Matriks404@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I just think in concepts/abstractions, I don’t know how to explain it, lol.
I definitely don’t think in pictures though, like other person said.
vithigar@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
With imagery, or in abstracts. I have an internal monologue but not everything is a monologue. If I’m working on a project of some kind I’ll usually keep a mental model of the current piece I’m working on in my head. There’s no monologue attached, it’s just a “working copy” of my current task.
Or for example if I’m reaching somewhere I can’t see to plug in a usb port or something I’m visualizing in my head what my hand is doing, but I’m not talking myself through it.
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
In pictures, for one example
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
What everyone else here said but also keep in mind it’s not binary.
If you ask me to picture an Apple on a windowsill I can kind of do that. And then if you ask me to make it polka dot, I could kind of do that. In my mind’s eye though it’s like it’s severely myopic. It’s not fuzzy but the details are not there.
When I’m drawing things, the act of me putting the marks on the paper is where the object is formed. I generally don’t have a solid concept in my head that’s coming out on paper. I could definitely do the 2D outline of an apple, But if you want me to perspective skew it there’s no way. I might be able to draw the 2D outline and then slowly modify that to make it look more 3D, But I’ve got to be making changes to something already on paper rather than having something come out that’s just kind of the right direction.
some_random_nick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There was a thread on r/SamHarris (maybe 2 years ago) where some people without inner monologue answered questions. It was interesting to read.