Inner speech
Do you talk to yourself? Not aloud (although you may do that, too; I certainly do), but in your head? Psychologists who study the phenomenon say:
…we don’t have to use full sentences to talk to ourselves, because we know what we mean.
Is it the same as thinking? No; thinking doesn’t necessarily involve inner speech, although it can:
Thinking means a lot of different things and we’re not often very good at being clear what we mean by it. So I try to avoid [the term]—quite a difficult term to avoid. But it’s kind of everything the mind does. A certain category of thinking that we call verbal thinking, and that’s essentially inner speech, the stuff that we do in words. But I certainly think you can be intelligent and do lots of really clever stuff without language.
Mathematical thinking certainly seems to occur outside of language, although some of the instruction is in language. Some is in symbols, though; math is a language all it’s own, just not a verbal one.
When I write, how does inner speech factor into it? I think that writing is a form of inner speech channeled directly and nearly instantaneously into the fingers.
And just as one might expect, many deaf people (especially those who were always deaf) have a kind of inner speech that features signing.
Talking to yourself is fine until you find yourself saying, “huh?”
Then there’s the inner radio — playing along in variance with listening habits, practice time, etc. Mostly to the good, though I suppose occasionally to our annoyance.
Yes, I talk to myself internally. Also I have long imaginary conversations–sometimes arguments–with other people. Also sometimes I talk to myself out loud.
When it comes to mathematics–and sometimes to law and politics–I think geometrically, and I arrange shapes in my mind until they represent the problem appropriately, at which the point the solution will be clear. (Alas, I never found the right shapes for Fermat’s Last Theorem.)
I’ve heard that the majority of people do not have an inner monologue – they do not hear or see sentences in their minds. I wonder if this is really true – and if so, whether inner speech correlates with any other traits – being introverted, being more intuitive, etc. I can’t imagine what it’s like to think another way – I also talk to myself out loud and in my head, including imaginary arguments – I even remember having an “inner monologue” in my dreams from time to time. But the idea that people can think and reason and imagine in different ways is fascinating.
Here’s a great example of “outer speech,” and what I see as a great new and very persuasive campaign slogan for Biden–
“I’m not going nuts.” *
* See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/biden-claims-hes-not-going-nuts-after-another-blunder-on-the-campaign-trail/
I have to disagree with Neo with regard to math being non-verbal. While I don’t greet someone with “y=x^1/3”, I’ve often found for myself, that mathematical thinking is really helped by expressing the math verbally, especially when stuck on a particular problem. Same with much of my thinking. An inner dialog often helps me with understanding, and coming up with a new idea.
We have a new AP Physics text at the high school where I teach. This summer I have been working thru every problem in the book.
Inevitably, I scope the problem and its solution in my head before committing it to pencil and paper. I do not use sentences or visualize the equations, but rather consider the known and unknown variables and how the interact.
It is only when I write the equations down that I finally apply the numerical values and calculate a final value.
I will never admit to any internal cursing ;->
For me, inner speech occurs when I am conflicted. It’s like I have compartmentalized the conflicting viewpoints and those parts are engaging in a debate.
Math is just another form of language.
Remember what Orwell had Oceania slowly reducing the words of the language was because it helped control thoughts. It is much harder to THINK about rebellion if you don’t have any words for it, or for any related actions.
People THINK in words (yes, mathematical symbology is a form of “words”), in order to manipulate ideas. As ideas get more complex, we create new words to represent the gestalts they deal with, allowing us to manipulate larger and larger concepts more readily.
This is why there are so many specialist terms, because specialists are always needing gestalts for complex concepts, so they can manipulate them better.
Anyone who claims people don’t think in words is just not really understanding their own mental processes well enough to see it in action.
Yes, I talk to myself in my head regularly.
“…we don’t have to use full sentences to talk to ourselves, because we know what we mean.”
Unfortunately, a habit I had to train myself out of when I was younger (and still fall back into when I am under stress) is that I do this aloud with people assuming that they know what I mean.
Also, as far as mathematics are concerned, one of the techniques I was told to try in regards to my discalculia (I was diagnosed with synesthesia as teenager, and they often come hand in hand) was to use words rather than numbers in my head when calculating. It helped a bit but the best technique I found was a pencil and paper. Calculators tended to make my issues worse and I eschew them to this day.
I am one of those who thinks in words and knows it. Sometimes I edit myself for grammar or style, and sometimes I “see” the words I’m thinking in print in my head. I talk to myself, sometimes out loud — though usually not when anyone can hear me– and I conduct long imaginary discussions with people in my head, often working out what I wish I’d said in some real-life conversation or argument. I’m not sure my dreams are verbal, though. I can’t really tell. I can usually remember clear visual images and strong emotions from my dreams, but the memories don’t clearly include words. One of the ways that I know I’m falling asleep, if I’m interrupted, is realizing that my thoughts have lost the coherent form of logic and syntax they’d have during the day and are fragmenting into images and single words. But dreams are certainly thoughts, even though they aren’t exactly volitional. So, it’s complicated.
What I’d really like to know is how pre-verbal babies think. Clearly they ARE thinking. You can watch a baby acquiring knowledge at an explosive rate, long before she has words to do that with — say, concentrating as she figures out through trial and error and repetition how to control her fingers so she can grab something, or later, putting things inside other things and taking them out again over and over, learning the concepts of inside and outside and, eventually, relative size. At some point the baby starts to recognize and comprehend received language — probably long before she has any expressive language. Something nonverbal that can’t be anything but thinking has to be happening in her head to make it possible for her to grasp that the sounds she’s hearing are verbal symbols with specific meanings, so that she can begin to acquire and use language. When she realizes that “Mommy” and “Daddy” mean people in her life whom she already knows, how did she know them before she could attach words to her knowledge? How did she grasp the concept of a verbal symbol without having verbal symbols to think about it with? If I could, I’d love to spend a few weeks inside a pre-verbal baby’s brain and find out what the heck is going on in there.
Mrs. Whatsit,
Ditto to all that about baby learning. It blows my mind. It makes me wonder if words and language are an impediment to learning. Or maybe something like a speed governor on an engine, at least in function but not design. A useful tool to allow certain functions and advances but ultimately a double edged sword.
Maybe its just another facet of the Orwellian language changes and limits that OBloodyHell brought up.
I must be an outlier, I usually do not have an internal dialogue going on in my brain. Such dialogue does happen when I attempt to analyze something that puzzles me. Which as I think about it happens more than I wish. Internal silence has mostly been my condition from an early age.
My philosophy major friend and I used to debate whether there was thought without language. To me it was obvious there was thought without language — unless one defined thought as language — because of my experiences with visualization, problem-solving, art, dreams and psychedelics.
My friend would quote Heidegger, “Language is the House of Being,” as though that settled it, but I’ve never been sure what Heidegger was on about.
I usually do not have an internal dialogue going on in my brain.
parker: I would say you are unusual. That’s foreign to me. I don’t always have an inner voice going but most of the time I do.
At the Zen Center they call the inner voice “monkey chatter,” which strikes me as a bit harsh. Much of the aim of Zen meditation seems to be getting beyond the chatter to direct, unselfconscious, unitive experiencing of the world. Sounds good, but I don’t know how realistic a non-stop goal that is for humans, or at least for me.
When I’m meditating I’m mostly going over what I’m learning or programming while breathing and being relaxed. Which isn’t exactly kosher, but in an interview Leonard Cohen said he had a special dispensation from his Zen teacher to work on his songs during meditation, so I give myself that permission and will tell anyone whoever asks that Leonard said it was OK.
parker, maybe you should check out your local Zen Center. You might be a natural for zazen.
Owing to a hemorrhagic stroke in 2000, I found myself beset by what they call “expressive aphasia”. In (very) brief, I had to teach myself to talk again.
I found that unlike pre-stroke me, post-stroke, I found myself consciously constructing sentences as I spoke. (After a couple of years, it got easier.)
Anyway, I’m no longer sure what it was like to be pre-stroke me, as post-stroke me has had to, of necessity, think very much in human-language words and sentences.
Does anyone else read books in their dreams?
OT: I just watched an excellent documentary on Heidegger, which provides more of a biographical view of the man than a summary of his daunting philosophy.
“Heidegger: Human, All Too Human — Full BBC Documentary”
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/heidegger-thinking-the-unthinkable/
It pays particular attention to the new discoveries of Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism, which bothered some viewers as a smear, but to me it’s still essential, given Heidegger’s position as an ultimate philosopher discoursing on what it is to be an authentic human being.
MJR,
With all my sympathy and respect… I find that fascinating.
Anyone who claims people don’t think in words is just not really understanding their own mental processes well enough to see it in action.
Clearly utterly incorrect.
— Am I hungry? How would I even put thinking about that into words? Do you honestly think your internal monologue goes “Am I hungry? Stomach, give me your report. Ah, a bit of a pang. Maybe I should eat.”
— Do I want my sandwich heated? I recall the tastes of the two, and make a decision. There are no words involved at any point.
— Do I want to walk the long way to work, or the faster but more tiring short way? I “think” about how each would make me “feel”, and make a decision.
— What am I going to wear? Where did I leave my keys?
I would say that most of our decisions are made without words.
I know that when I watch football, that I basically stop thinking in words at all. I see the actions and know what I expect to happen, and then observe if it does happen, far faster than I could ever process in words.
Can you imagine how terrible a baseball player would be if they tried to think in words about how to hit a pitch?
“Can you imagine how terrible a baseball player would be if they tried to think in words about how to hit a pitch?”
A centipede was happy, quite,
until a frog in fun,
said, “Pray, which leg comes after which?”
Which raised her mind to such a pitch
she lay distracted in a ditch
considering how to run.
(That’s the way I learned it in grade school, so it must be right; however, I don’t put a “p” in hamster unless it is a silent one.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma
Much we do we do without thinking, (finger-hot stove). Much of our day to day actions are done by our subconscious. That is who hits the ball. Driving is much harder if you try to think about it. You have to let your subconscious know what you want, and let it do it. I don’t think about which keys to type, I think of the word I want, and my “fingers” do the work without my thinking about typing.
The strange part of that is my subconscious has a mind of its own. I would fall asleep typing a novel, and wake, needing to edit extra words typed while “I” was sleeping. Real words, not just zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. One of my favorites was “my blog is the frog i am not” . We just ride the horse.
I fall asleep very easily, and touch type, so my fingers are able to type with my eyes closed.
Do we think in words? Feynman had an example:
I said, “But thinking is nothing but talking to yourself inside.”
“Oh yeah?” Bernie said. “Do you know the crazy shape of the crankshaft in a car?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Good. Now, tell me: how did you describe it when you were talking to yourself?”
So I learned from Bernie that thoughts can be visual as well as verbal.
I think I used to live inside my head, both in words and not, much more than I do now. Now, it seems I’m never without this little tyrant I’m typing on, so the inside of my head is seldom quiet enough for me to have a thought – or at least a thought that’s not related to what I just read.
My younger son watches videos the way I read blogs; I wonder if his thoughts are in movie form. My unprompted thoughts have pretty much always been spoken-word (never written-word), but then I was a constant reader from when I first learned to read, so I guess I don’t have enough information to opine on whether how we shape those unprompted thoughts is innate or shaped in turn by how we prefer to experience the world.
Great Feynman example by Frederick – thinking is both in words and, at times, in visual images. I haven’t much thought about baby thoughts before, except for the idea of hooking up a direct implant into a brain that connects to a computer that, thru proper thinking, allows the brain to control an on-screen avatar. With the next step being to substitute a real exo-skeleton / waldo device that follows the same brain commands. Thought as action, with body response being the reaction to the thought. I used to think that Computer Aided Telepathy would be a big thing, but now mobile phones do most of that better so there is little need, little market, little profit potential.
Not having a “word” for something certainly makes thinking of a concept more difficult. We mostly us Leibniz’s “calculus” math symbols rather than the more complex summation ones that Newton used as he invented it first. Maybe. The Slovak language is often missing words that are common in English, like having the same word for “borrow” (/lend), where the difficult grammar indicates who is borrower and who is the one borrowed from. An English word like “cut” might have different Slovak words depending on whether one cuts hair, or wood, or bread. (Not to mention cards.) As a language, the English acceptance of other words and concepts is unsurpassed. C’est la Vie.
I usually hold my internal conversations in silence, but my wife has mentioned I’m doing too much of verbal talking to myself in the last few years. I suspect that men are more often visual thinkers and women more verbal.
I’m pretty sure Truth is not merely words; I’m sure reality isn’t.
Inner voice is a great part of reading comprehension, especially if you have some acting talent and can use the appropriate accents/delivery when reading poetry.
Jamie on August 28, 2019 at 7:44 am said:
My younger son watches videos the way I read blogs; I wonder if his thoughts are in movie form.
* * *
One of our sons had a great deal of difficulty with reading and spelling in grade school, which we managed but never really overcame until he got older.
He was eventually able to describe what was happening: he did not remember letters and words as such, but literally / visually as movies, and after he had (a real example from first grade) “watched” 9 spelling words, the 10th one exceeded his bandwidth and he forgot them all.
He does well at reading now, but still can’t spell without great effort.
Curiously, the grandson of one of my friends, some years later, was having the same kinds of trouble in school, and when I talked to him I found out he also was one of the “movie” visualizers.
Both were very artistic, and I suspect here is a correlation between this quasi-synesthesia and that talent.