Today I learned that not everyone has an internal monologue

Came up a few days ago (at a different url, oddly) and the comments are worth looking through.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22193451" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22193451</a>

So I think I deliberately trained myself out of having an internal monologue.<p>I don&#x27;t have an internal monologue most of the time, but I can definitely turn one on and off when I choose to. I also have a distinct memory related to this. I think I was a teenager at the time, and I don&#x27;t remember what I was thinking about, but my train of thought got stuck because I couldn&#x27;t remember the right word for a specific concept. Then I realized--wait a minute, I know what I&#x27;m trying to think about even if I don&#x27;t have the word for it, which means I don&#x27;t need to use words to think about things! So I stopped using words to think about things.

Could this simply be a misunderstanding of what an internal monologue is?<p>Is there any science behind this?

Since that other thread seems dead now...<p>I&#x27;m one of those people. And from my point of view it would be a terrible burden to have to have that. Because at my speed (or broadness) of thought i imagine i&#x27;d have to wind up&#x2F;fast forward that voice to an incredibly shrill voice, and even then it would be insufficient by several orders of magnitude. It would be like trying to press a river trough a straw. I&#x27;m just wondering about how common&#x2F;uncommon this is. After reading the other thread(s) it &#x27;seems&#x27; like the (sub)vocalizers are the majority?

Fun fact: i do think while i&#x27;m asleep! my friends were shocked when i first told them about that. I don&#x27;t know how to describe it, but i can think, alter my dream, reason about things, etc--and i used to do math and solve coding problems too.<p>the worst part is that my dreams are too tough. when i&#x27;m sad or something things get very rough on my dreams because everything seem so real.

I&#x27;m surprised that some people can&#x27;t do it at all. I learnt to read aloud first, then read silently which I always remember doing by sub-vocalisation. I would have thought if you could read by sub-vocalisation then you could talk to yourself. Possibly, other people read without sub-vocalisation which I suspect would allow you to read faster.

I wonder if those people w&#x2F;o the internal Don Pardo can actually sleep. I wish I could turn mine off...

Guess I don&#x27;t, though I do often hear a &quot;speaker&quot; when reading text.<p>Also usually can&#x27;t recognize faces using System 1. Which means I often don&#x27;t see someone I know until they&#x27;ve long-since decided that I&#x27;m ignoring them. :-&#x2F;

I had no idea. This has blown my mind almost as much as when I simultaneously discovered that aphantaisa was a thing and that I have it. The biggest thing to come to grips with was the realisation that others don&#x27;t have it!

And here I always thought I was the only one who basically has a permanent narrator.