People without an inner voice have poorer verbal memory
humanities.ku.dk
The vast majority of people have an ongoing conversation with themselves, an inner voice, that plays an important role in their daily lives. But between 5-10 per cent of the population do not have the same experience of an inner voice, and they find it more difficult to perform certain verbal memory tasks, new research shows.
  • @TodayEnglish
    12•6 months ago

    Apparently. I first learned about this last year when a co-worker told me to listen to my inner voice. I said, " oh yeah, like Sybil or Jiminy cricket?" I thought she was kidding. Then I thought she was crazy. Then 2/3 of my office said they hear it too. People who hear don’t believe that other people don’t, and vice versa. People are always trying to trick me into saying I hear something by asking me how I know the sound of my husband’s voice or recognize a song, or get a song stuck in my head. When I have a song stuck in my head it’s just the urge to sing it and there’s no music. I can recognize actors by their voice sometimes, but I cannot do impressions or accents at all!

    • KillingTimeItselfEnglish
      2•6 months ago

      you can’t recognize voices without an internal monologue? I see no reason that shouldn’t be a thing people would even consider. Voices are like identifying unique patterns. They’re incredibly easy, and we’re trained to do it from birth. Similar thing for songs, although in that case i think it’s more a sense of auditory “muscle memory” as the auditory experience illicits previously excited paths through the brain, leading to the same experience as last time, which allows you to define it independently.