Mind’s Eyes vs. Internal Monologues

I came across an article called “People Are Weirded Out To Discover That Some People Don’t Have An Internal Monologue” earlier today (and if that link no longer works, then you can try this archive version instead), and I have to confess that while I don’t feel “weirded out”, I am nonetheless surprised.

But should I have been?

I have talked elsewhere about my inability to picture anything in my mind’s eye (a condition known as aphantasia), and I’ve known about my lack of any visualization skills for a long, long time.

I never gave it much thought as a child, until I swapped some Penny Arrows (an old type of candy sold in England when I was a child) for a book called “Instant Memory“, which was written by a South African magician known as Robert Harbin.

That book was my introduction to mnemonics, or memory training systems, and I soon realized that the instruction to picture the items I was meant to be remembering simply wasn’t working for me.

For example, in a memory and magic square demonstration I once gave, I was tasked with remembering that an ape was sitting on a table.

Try as I might, I was unable to create that picture in my mind – all I could do was repeat the words to myself, but that is nowhere near as effective. (Mnemonics do work for me, but I know, having spoken with others who practise these systems, that it’s a lot more difficult if you cannot visualize anything.)

Later in life, when I began reading up about hypnosis, and I tried a few guided hypnosis sessions on tape / MP3, I encountered the same problem – being told to imagine I was walking up a flight of stairs was impossible.

Again, I obviously know what walking up stairs is like, but there is no way I can create that picture in my head.

Apart from that, I just assumed it was a talent I did not possess – but I did know, or, at least, assume, that others had the ability, otherwise why would these books and audio recordings tell you to do that?

It was when I married my second wife that the subject came up in earnest – because she had a highly visual brain.

She could see things in her head as clearly as though she was looking at them right in front of her.

In addition, she had this sort of visual mapping system, so that she knew where everything was.

There were boxes that had never been unpacked since she moved to this house in 2003, and well over a decade later, she could still tell me where to find specific items – which box they were in, and where in the house those boxes were.

To me, it was almost like real magic – I can put something away today, and by tomorrow, I’ve no idea where I put it.

From her perspective, having had that ability her entire life, she was amazed that there were people like me whose mind’s eye was effectively blind. (I’ve seen estimates that suggest as many as one in five people have this condition.)

So, back to the article I mentioned above.

Words have always been my thing, and while my sense of hearing is far from acute, I am in many ways more auditory-based than visual-based.

That means I have that internal monologue, as described in the referenced article, running a large part of the time. For example, I give a running commentary to myself (either in my head or even vocalized, especially since my wife died and there’s only my dogs to talk to), giving myself instructions about what I’m doing or need to do next.

And like my wife with her visual abilities, I had always assumed that everybody had some sort of internal monologue. It may not be as detailed as mine, but I thought it existed.

It’s sort of strange that I knew some people had the visual ability and some didn’t, but that I assumed everybody had the monologue feature – but it was exactly that, an assumption.

So this article came as a surprise to me, and I’d love to learn more.

For example:

• Do people with no internal monologue have a mind’s eye instead? That is, are the two abilities mutually exclusive, or do some people have both and some people have neither?
• How do people with no internal monologue think? How do they decide what to say without forming the sentences in their head first? Are these the type of people who open their mouth without thinking?
• How do these abilities correlate to introversion or extraversion, if at all?
• Does having an internal monologue make life easier or more difficult, compared to those who don’t have it? I cannot imagine a life without it, and it’s part of who I am, apparently, but the downside is that sometimes it keeps me awake at night, so do people without this monologue find it easier to get to sleep?
• For authors, does this determine whether you are a planner, or plotter, (i.e. a writer who creates an outline and knows exactly what will happen) or a pantser (i.e. somebody who has a general idea of where the book is going, but who makes it all up as they go along)? (By nature, I’m more of a planner, but since I started free-writing every day, just over six months ago, I’m trying to become more fluid and dynamic in my writing – and it’s difficult!)

I’m sure I could think of many more questions, but to me, this is what science is all about – it’s not necessarily about finding the ultimate answer, it’s about the continuous search for something that better describes how things work.

In this case, the discovery that not everybody has an internal monologue immediately sparks, for me at least, a plethora of other questions, each of which will probably generate even more, and so on.

So in some ways, science (or perhaps more accurately, the scientific method) is both deductive and inductive – we can use observations of the world around us to draw conclusions, but then again, once we understand certain facts, we can begin to apply those in broader terms to create more general principles.

And when it comes to the way the human brain works, I don’t think scientists will be running out of things to study any time soon.

In the same way that I was surprised some people don’t have an internal monologue, and my late wife was surprised that not everybody has an inner mind’s eye, I find it hard to believe that there are people who are not as fascinated by all of this research into the human brain (well, and that of other animals too) as I am, but I’m also sure those people do exist.