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.
  • @AceticonEnglish
    2•1 month ago

    I have an inner voice but I don’t use it when I’m reading, which is maybe why I am a very fast reader.

    I tend to use it when pondering on things. That said I just noticed that when composing and cross-checking this text for posting, I also used it.

    Curiously, nowadays my inner voice is not just in my own mothertongue but can be in just about any of the languages I know enough for basic conversation. It’s probably related to, because my foreign language skills are so advanced (I can speak about 7 languages) that I’ve long stopped translating to my native tongue in my mind and concepts just translate directly from those foreign languages. Also, I’ve lived in a couple of countries and as I would eventually end up mainly speaking the local language, my inner voice would also, eventually, end up also using that language.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•30 days ago

      very interesting because I moved back to my home country 5 yrs ago after living abroad for 24. still think in my secondary language after being alone with my thoughts long enough

      • @AceticonEnglish
        1•29 days ago

        Yeah, I have a similar experience of still thinking in a foreign language even though I’ve been back in my homeland for years after 2 decades abroad.

        I suspect my thinking language still being generally English is probably because I keep getting exposed to English-language media. I’ve noticed that, for example, if I think about my time living in The Netherlands or are exposed to Dutch-language media, my thinking often switches to Dutch.