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.
  • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    7 months ago

    Every time?

    No.

    Easy example; picture an item in your head. Now flip it.

    No language necessary or really even applicable.

    But to learn that some people never have an inner dialogue…? That sounds so weird.

    • CoggyMcFee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      7 months ago

      Some people can’t picture an item in their head, or can barely do so and wouldn’t be able to flip it.

      • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        7 months ago

        Yeah complete aphantasia is crazy.

        The point is that no-one does that sort of thinking with language, as it’s not really applicable.

        • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          7·
          7 months ago

          I was really confused when you said picture an object then flip it. When people say picture something I always assumed that was a way to say think about the thing. I guess because I can think about things, obviously, but I can’t picture them. Their wouldn’t be a thing for me to flip if someone asked me to picture an object which left me wondering, wtf do you mean flip it.

          • mrcleanup@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            7 months ago

            Picture a teapot. Picture it turning over so you can see the other side. Sort of like that.

            • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2·
              7 months ago

              I guess my point is that I can’t picture something in that way. Picturing a green apple vs a red apple. I don’t actually visualize anything. I can think ok it’s a sour apple or sweet apple but I don’t have a visual to modify. The teapot I would just be thinking ok the teapot is upside down, theirs nothing I can visualize that would change. I have tried really hard, especially when I miss loved ones, I wish I could bring about images of them in my mind really badly.

              • mrcleanup@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                7 months ago

                Faces are hard for me too, but not impossible. It’s like AI. It’s easy to get a “teapot” but it takes more work and focus to get a specific individual.

            • MeThisGuy@feddit.nlEnglish
              1·
              7 months ago

              guess the upside of it is is that if you see something traumatic you can’t revisualize it?

              some things can’t be unseen doesn’t apply for everyone? must be nice

              • mrcleanup@lemmy.worldEnglish
                11·
                7 months ago

                Maybe. One way to process trauma is to re-visit it until it becomes more familiar and less of an extreme experience. Seeing it in your mind may make it more real, but it also means you can just picture a teapot instead if you need to get away from it.

                • Dasus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  Seeing it in your mind may make it more real, but it also means you can just picture a teapot instead if you need to get away from it.

                  Thaaaaat’s not how trauma works. If you could just distract yourself, the trauma wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue.

                  The problem is being forced to relive a horrible memory despite your will or not.

                  • mrcleanup@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    11·
                    7 months ago

                    I love how we are all here talking about how we all think and perceive differently and you decided it was important to tell me that the way I process trauma isn’t real. You can go ahead and fuck right off.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          it’s wack, shits even weirder when you dream.

          My dreams often get retconned into the real world, unless my brain immediately determines them to be bullshit. Which is uh, unsettling.

        • DriftinGrifter@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          7 months ago

          i can imagine textures and tastes and stuff and geometry relatively complex but when i try to imagine colors all i get is a flat color diagram or an empty room with only one colour

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      41·
      7 months ago

      oh my friend, you have made the most relevant mistake in the book, may i introduce you to aphantasics? People who are incapable of visualizing something in their mind.

      • EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        It’s hard to describe for me. Cuz I don’t actually “see” anything I try to imagine. If I close my eyes and try to visualize say an image of a desk at a window all I see is darkness. The image exists, I can I guess I’d say “feel” it there and i could even draw it. But I can’t “see” it. Like the part of me that’s making the picture is drawing it on a live stream but the part of me that should be seeing the stream has the monitor off.

        Same with the whole internal monologue thing. I don’t “hear” the words in my head or “see” them written out in my imagination but I kinda just “feel” them there. It poses a problem when my mind really gets going because there will be often like half a dozen different distinct thoughts I can feel in there. So I end up having to talk to myself out loud in order to keep from losing whatever thread I’m trying to follow.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          7 months ago

          i like to separate it between visualizing something, and conceptualizing something, because if someone says a visualize a sphere, you know what a sphere is, you simply don’t need to visualize it in order to conceptualize what it should look like, thus leading to a “pseudo image”

          but if someone were to say visualize the tread pattern of an all weather tire, you probably wouldn’t be able to do that very well, since you likely don’t have a very solid conceptual understanding of what it looks like.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      7 months ago

      Yeah, those things are still almost entirely word-baaed for me. Low level aphantasia, I can’t form a very clear picture in my head, but my inner monologue does a lot of lifting.