18 ms·

Well, language is not really required for thinking and conscious experiences, a huge chunk of people don't even have an internal monologue, and some (that'd be

Well, language is not really required for thinking and conscious experiences, a huge chunk of people don't even have an internal monologue, and some (that'd be me) don't have any "byproducts" of thought process. Though there are recent experiments showing that unconscious brain retains language processing abilities [1], so the two might be as well independent systems [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10448-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10448-0

estearum 3mo ago
IMO it's far more likely that people don't agree on what it means to "have an internal monologue" than that people actually bifurcate that dramatically on cognition. Surely there are some people with an actual difference from baseline, but I don't think it's the near-equal split that seems to appear when you just ask people about internal monologue This is in contrast with aphantasia (complete lack of mental imagery) which can be correlated with outwardly detectable responses. E.g. people who can imagine mental images will dilate pupils when imagining a bright light with eyes closed, while people with aphantasia will not. Not sure there's an analog for internal monologue but if anyone.
- devmor 3mo ago
  This is in the same vein to what I wanted to say here as well - I find it very likely that people with no internal monologue are executing similar mental processes, just without them being so “front and center” in the mind.
  - rolph 3mo ago
    Metacognition https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/zjuzickv https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/zjuzickv not everyone is aware of the "methodology", they just think it through, some however have an executive layer to cognition vs reflex. imnot sure enough to form an opinion quite yet but thinking about thinking, modifying the methods of cognition, may be a learned skill, perhaps with a developmental window. a comparison between extroverts and introverts [1] for perceived modality of cognition might be interesting. it may very well be that a difference in neural development is the cause of this disparity. 1] this is about focus on internal conceptualization vs external perceptualization. myself, i think in terms of a mono/dialogue if i am preparing to disseminate. if i am thinking for my own benefit i percieve it as idetic imagery and run thought experiments to qualify for IRL candidacy.
    - devmor 3mo ago
      > myself, i think in terms of a mono/dialogue if i am preparing to disseminate. > if i am thinking for my own benefit i percieve it as idetic imagery and run thought experiments to qualify for IRL candidacy. I’m very similar personally, though I often have background dialogues going over “sub threads” of whatever I’m thinking about. I have also wondered if people who say they don’t have this kind of thought process actually do - but the real difference is that for some reason it persists in memory for us, whereas it is immediately discarded for them, leaving only the result.
- vitamark 3mo ago
  Well, I can't say for the general population, but for me there's just nothing unless I actively try to think of words, sentences and other things. One moment you don't have an idea and the next you do, like a state switch. I really feel like humans argue too much about how computer programs think and at the same time too little about how humans think. The topic is criminally underresearched and the existing research is all over the place.
  - saltcured 3mo ago
    You make it sound like there are no ideas until words arrive? For me, my normal ground state is full of thinking that is not linguistic. My mode switch is more like having to turn on the whole language subsystem and pay attention to it, often to the detriment of my native concentration. When I do think with words, it is usually something I am manipulating with a purpose. It is not the thoughts themselves. I have a thought, and I attempt to render it into words. Outside of recollection of past speech, it is extremely rare for me to feel like words arrive with a thought I wasn't already holding. Most often, it happens when making jokes and puns in real-time. I am in a mood to be playful, and may have a vague feeling that there is something funny to interject, but cannot separate it from the word combination that comes to mind. But I can't really think and deliberate verbally. It feels like an act of puppetry.
    - vitamark 3mo ago
      No, I actually say that there are no words unless I think of them. Ideas appear out of nowhere and are made of nothing, like they just are integral part of my mind state
- Fraterkes 3mo ago
  Do you have a source for the pupil dilation thing? Sounds fascinating!
  - lightedman 3mo ago
    I scored a 68 on the VVIQ and I can watch my pupils dilate in response to me 'seeing' something in my mind. It doesn't have to be a bright light in my mind's eye, I can imagine something that would trigger a fight or flight response and make the same thing happen.
    - estearum 3mo ago
      Yeah this is another test they use: imagine something frightening and "normal people" will get clammy hands and elevated heart rates while aphantasics will not
- amalcon 3mo ago
  I don't think a bifurcation of cognition is necessary to explain this. You get both people who claim to always think with words (to the point where they don't understand how it's possible to think without one), and people who claim never to outside of linguistic tasks like writing (to the point where they need "internal monologue" explained to them). In my experience, if you get down to it -- most people will have experienced cases of the thought preceding the word (you can skip the word, or not, but either way it demonstrates a thought without a word) and of the word preceding the thought (people who claim not to have an internal monologue will usually still do this sometimes when writing). It's just that subvocalization is one powerful technique for organizing thoughts, but not the only one. If you had a swimmer who only ever learned the crawl stroke (freestyle), they might wonder how someone can swim without it. The difference, of course, is that the breaststroke is a demonstrable physical act whereas cognitive techniques are not. The monologuers are just more practiced at subvocalization-based reasoning, and the non-monologuers are more practiced at other types. It's not that hard to exert limited control over which technique you're using -- and I think there are multiple nonverbal techniques. I'd encourage people to explore the space a bit. Subvocalization-first approaches are very good for linear progressions, whereas subvocalization-last (or never) approaches are usually better for big-picture reasoning.
  - estearum 3mo ago
    I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Then getting them to describe and compare those inner workings is, IMO, largely a fool's errand. I'll wait until someone develops an external validation of this to believe it. I say this as someone who pays a lot of attention to my mind's inner workings (meditation etc, near-complete aphantasic) and the more I pay attention to the inner workings, the less I know the answer to whether or not I have an inner monologue.
    - RaftPeople 3mo ago
      > I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Are you thinking that the term "internal monologue" is being interpreted too literally and that any system of organized thought, even one without the apparent usage of words, could still be considered an internal monologue?
- justbees 3mo ago
  My mom has aphantasia and we were both shocked to discover it even exists. She saw something about it online and then started asking everyone in the family if they could picture an apple in their mind. We all said - yes of course, what are you talking about? And she said, "When you say the word apple, I think of the concept of an apple. It's juicy. It's crisp. It's red, etc, but I don't SEE an apple. I just know what it is." She had no concept that other people literally saw the apple and I had no concept that people couldn't see the apple. I asked her what she thought the phrase "in your minds eye" meant for her entire life and she said she thought it just meant exactly what she was describing and not literally seeing anything...
  - estearum 3mo ago
    Yeah this was my experience too as a near-complete aphantasic. Doing the apple test around the dinner table was enlightening, and it also made a whole lot of other things make sense through my life as well: I have virtually no concrete memories from a first-person point of view (I remember the fact that events happened, I do not remember subjectively being there) It's unfortunately very insulting when someone says, "hey remember when we did that very important thing together?" and my answer has always been "uhh... I remember that we did it?"
    - justbees 3mo ago
      That's so interesting to me! I actually have a terrible memory for events and names so my answer is almost always - sort of. So I can visualize an apple, but if you say - remember that time we went apple picking with Greg? I might only vaguely remember that, and not know who Greg is. But, if you showed me a picture of Greg I would probably say - oh that's that guy we went apple picking with. Why did we do that?
- infinite_spin 3mo ago
  I'm very reluctant to believe people when they say they don't have an internal monologue. Studies on the matter all appear to rely on self-reported data, not objective measurements. It's been shown that electromyography can be used to measure myoelectric signals produced when a person subvocalizes their speech (i.e. an inner monologue). It works well enough to reconstruct and synthesize that speech. So we could test this objectively, and I'm not sure why we haven't.
  - idiotsecant 3mo ago
    I'm not sure what you think all these people have to gain from tricking you. I have no internal monologue. None whatsoever. If I have something like an internal monologue I don't have any conscious access to it at all. When I want to think through a spatial type problem, I can visualize shapes, images, rotations, relationships, etc but it has no verbal component. If I want to think through a text or verbal heavy task, like perhaps planning some code, I type it out. I do have intrusive thoughts but they are in the form of memories of a thing that happened or simulations of something that could happen, I guess. I most surely do not have an internal narrator or anything that approaches any kind of inner verbal life.
    - infinite_spin 3mo ago
      > I'm not sure what you think all these people have to gain from tricking you. Asking for objective evidence of a phenomenon being self-reported by enough people to make the news isn't really about me. I don't know why you're being defensive in a thread that wasn't directed at you, but this is not a good sign.
      - idiotsecant 3mo ago
        Weird that you go right to assuming everyone who doesn't agree with you is defensive. I think you need to recalibrate your outrage sensors. You said a thing doesn't exist. I pointed out that the thing does, in fact, exist. That's all that happened here.
bayarearefugee 3mo ago
There is also a rather thorny chicken and egg problem. If language is required for thinking and conscious experience how did we manage to develop language in the first place.
- triceratops 3mo ago
  Human level thinking and conscious experience aren't required for language. Dogs understand spoken words and gestures. They're also pretty good at making themselves understood through noises and body language. Humans have better hardware than dogs for making noises. I could see language development bootstrapping abstract thinking over generations in humans.

estearum 3mo ago

IMO it's far more likely that people don't agree on what it means to "have an internal monologue" than that people actually bifurcate that dramatically on cognition. Surely there are some people with an actual difference from baseline, but I don't think it's the near-equal split that seems to appear when you just ask people about internal monologue This is in contrast with aphantasia (complete lack of mental imagery) which can be correlated with outwardly detectable responses. E.g. people who can imagine mental images will dilate pupils when imagining a bright light with eyes closed, while people with aphantasia will not. Not sure there's an analog for internal monologue but if anyone.

devmor 3mo ago
This is in the same vein to what I wanted to say here as well - I find it very likely that people with no internal monologue are executing similar mental processes, just without them being so “front and center” in the mind.
- rolph 3mo ago
  Metacognition https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/zjuzickv https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/zjuzickv not everyone is aware of the "methodology", they just think it through, some however have an executive layer to cognition vs reflex. imnot sure enough to form an opinion quite yet but thinking about thinking, modifying the methods of cognition, may be a learned skill, perhaps with a developmental window. a comparison between extroverts and introverts [1] for perceived modality of cognition might be interesting. it may very well be that a difference in neural development is the cause of this disparity. 1] this is about focus on internal conceptualization vs external perceptualization. myself, i think in terms of a mono/dialogue if i am preparing to disseminate. if i am thinking for my own benefit i percieve it as idetic imagery and run thought experiments to qualify for IRL candidacy.
  - devmor 3mo ago
    > myself, i think in terms of a mono/dialogue if i am preparing to disseminate. > if i am thinking for my own benefit i percieve it as idetic imagery and run thought experiments to qualify for IRL candidacy. I’m very similar personally, though I often have background dialogues going over “sub threads” of whatever I’m thinking about. I have also wondered if people who say they don’t have this kind of thought process actually do - but the real difference is that for some reason it persists in memory for us, whereas it is immediately discarded for them, leaving only the result.
vitamark 3mo ago
Well, I can't say for the general population, but for me there's just nothing unless I actively try to think of words, sentences and other things. One moment you don't have an idea and the next you do, like a state switch. I really feel like humans argue too much about how computer programs think and at the same time too little about how humans think. The topic is criminally underresearched and the existing research is all over the place.
- saltcured 3mo ago
  You make it sound like there are no ideas until words arrive? For me, my normal ground state is full of thinking that is not linguistic. My mode switch is more like having to turn on the whole language subsystem and pay attention to it, often to the detriment of my native concentration. When I do think with words, it is usually something I am manipulating with a purpose. It is not the thoughts themselves. I have a thought, and I attempt to render it into words. Outside of recollection of past speech, it is extremely rare for me to feel like words arrive with a thought I wasn't already holding. Most often, it happens when making jokes and puns in real-time. I am in a mood to be playful, and may have a vague feeling that there is something funny to interject, but cannot separate it from the word combination that comes to mind. But I can't really think and deliberate verbally. It feels like an act of puppetry.
  - vitamark 3mo ago
    No, I actually say that there are no words unless I think of them. Ideas appear out of nowhere and are made of nothing, like they just are integral part of my mind state
Fraterkes 3mo ago
Do you have a source for the pupil dilation thing? Sounds fascinating!
- lightedman 3mo ago
  I scored a 68 on the VVIQ and I can watch my pupils dilate in response to me 'seeing' something in my mind. It doesn't have to be a bright light in my mind's eye, I can imagine something that would trigger a fight or flight response and make the same thing happen.
  - estearum 3mo ago
    Yeah this is another test they use: imagine something frightening and "normal people" will get clammy hands and elevated heart rates while aphantasics will not
amalcon 3mo ago
I don't think a bifurcation of cognition is necessary to explain this. You get both people who claim to always think with words (to the point where they don't understand how it's possible to think without one), and people who claim never to outside of linguistic tasks like writing (to the point where they need "internal monologue" explained to them). In my experience, if you get down to it -- most people will have experienced cases of the thought preceding the word (you can skip the word, or not, but either way it demonstrates a thought without a word) and of the word preceding the thought (people who claim not to have an internal monologue will usually still do this sometimes when writing). It's just that subvocalization is one powerful technique for organizing thoughts, but not the only one. If you had a swimmer who only ever learned the crawl stroke (freestyle), they might wonder how someone can swim without it. The difference, of course, is that the breaststroke is a demonstrable physical act whereas cognitive techniques are not. The monologuers are just more practiced at subvocalization-based reasoning, and the non-monologuers are more practiced at other types. It's not that hard to exert limited control over which technique you're using -- and I think there are multiple nonverbal techniques. I'd encourage people to explore the space a bit. Subvocalization-first approaches are very good for linear progressions, whereas subvocalization-last (or never) approaches are usually better for big-picture reasoning.
- estearum 3mo ago
  I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Then getting them to describe and compare those inner workings is, IMO, largely a fool's errand. I'll wait until someone develops an external validation of this to believe it. I say this as someone who pays a lot of attention to my mind's inner workings (meditation etc, near-complete aphantasic) and the more I pay attention to the inner workings, the less I know the answer to whether or not I have an inner monologue.
  - RaftPeople 3mo ago
    > I still think it's far more likely that people aren't describing the same thing. People are very, very bad at interpreting and experiencing their mind's inner workings. Are you thinking that the term "internal monologue" is being interpreted too literally and that any system of organized thought, even one without the apparent usage of words, could still be considered an internal monologue?
justbees 3mo ago
My mom has aphantasia and we were both shocked to discover it even exists. She saw something about it online and then started asking everyone in the family if they could picture an apple in their mind. We all said - yes of course, what are you talking about? And she said, "When you say the word apple, I think of the concept of an apple. It's juicy. It's crisp. It's red, etc, but I don't SEE an apple. I just know what it is." She had no concept that other people literally saw the apple and I had no concept that people couldn't see the apple. I asked her what she thought the phrase "in your minds eye" meant for her entire life and she said she thought it just meant exactly what she was describing and not literally seeing anything...
- estearum 3mo ago
  Yeah this was my experience too as a near-complete aphantasic. Doing the apple test around the dinner table was enlightening, and it also made a whole lot of other things make sense through my life as well: I have virtually no concrete memories from a first-person point of view (I remember the fact that events happened, I do not remember subjectively being there) It's unfortunately very insulting when someone says, "hey remember when we did that very important thing together?" and my answer has always been "uhh... I remember that we did it?"
  - justbees 3mo ago
    That's so interesting to me! I actually have a terrible memory for events and names so my answer is almost always - sort of. So I can visualize an apple, but if you say - remember that time we went apple picking with Greg? I might only vaguely remember that, and not know who Greg is. But, if you showed me a picture of Greg I would probably say - oh that's that guy we went apple picking with. Why did we do that?
infinite_spin 3mo ago
I'm very reluctant to believe people when they say they don't have an internal monologue. Studies on the matter all appear to rely on self-reported data, not objective measurements. It's been shown that electromyography can be used to measure myoelectric signals produced when a person subvocalizes their speech (i.e. an inner monologue). It works well enough to reconstruct and synthesize that speech. So we could test this objectively, and I'm not sure why we haven't.
- idiotsecant 3mo ago
  I'm not sure what you think all these people have to gain from tricking you. I have no internal monologue. None whatsoever. If I have something like an internal monologue I don't have any conscious access to it at all. When I want to think through a spatial type problem, I can visualize shapes, images, rotations, relationships, etc but it has no verbal component. If I want to think through a text or verbal heavy task, like perhaps planning some code, I type it out. I do have intrusive thoughts but they are in the form of memories of a thing that happened or simulations of something that could happen, I guess. I most surely do not have an internal narrator or anything that approaches any kind of inner verbal life.
  - infinite_spin 3mo ago
    > I'm not sure what you think all these people have to gain from tricking you. Asking for objective evidence of a phenomenon being self-reported by enough people to make the news isn't really about me. I don't know why you're being defensive in a thread that wasn't directed at you, but this is not a good sign.
    - idiotsecant 3mo ago
      Weird that you go right to assuming everyone who doesn't agree with you is defensive. I think you need to recalibrate your outrage sensors. You said a thing doesn't exist. I pointed out that the thing does, in fact, exist. That's all that happened here.

bayarearefugee 3mo ago

There is also a rather thorny chicken and egg problem. If language is required for thinking and conscious experience how did we manage to develop language in the first place.

triceratops 3mo ago
Human level thinking and conscious experience aren't required for language. Dogs understand spoken words and gestures. They're also pretty good at making themselves understood through noises and body language. Humans have better hardware than dogs for making noises. I could see language development bootstrapping abstract thinking over generations in humans.