I suspect it is related, but when I read I don't hear the words unless I deliberately choose to read the text in my head, otherwise my process is written word -> concept.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi...
"The debate [over mental imagery] was resolved by Francis Galton (...). Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images."
Personally, I'm someone with small-talk module running almost constantly, verbalizing most of my thinking and reading. On the other hand, I have very low capability of forming mental images.
I wonder how many other things in brain are like that, widely differing between people.
I have a pet theory that more visual thinking is something that has come in from our Neanderthal ancestors. We know they had a brain more specialised around visual processing, but very little beyond this. It is almost certain that some people today think in a similar way to Neanderthals given how much of the Neanderthal genome is still present in the human population, but who they are and what they think like is unknown.
I remember very clearly learning about the concept of the written word. Once it clicked suddenly I noticed the whole world was filled with words (not that I knew what most of them meant). The world was now very different to how I saw it before and I became fascinated with knowing what they all were (I used to drive my mother crazy asking her what every sign said).
I am also not sure if this is also related, but I was apparently quite a late talker (around 24 months), but once I started talking I was far ahead of other children of my age.
That is an interesting proposal. One thing I like about it is its easy testibility. Given how easy it is to find people without Neanderthal DNA, the effort needed to conduct a study on this question would be minimal.
And still, being part Neanderthal, I am curious.
The thing many people forget about those of us that are Neanderthal hybrids is that all us hybrids carry different parts of the Neanderthal genome. Pinning down what genes are linked to what phenotypes would be very, very interesting.
However, I'm different: I form mental images all the time. I create them too. I might be putting a mountain here or there, all narrating it with my spoken inner monologue. I'm like this when making art (visual art) as well - I narrate the motions, making noises with pen strokes and finishing paint brush strokes with something akin to a sports presenter on the radio.
The combination of these two means I can get a mental image in my head that I've narrated to myself to build it, yet cannot describe it aloud in words without changing thought modes.
According to Feyman's experiment, above, it turns out there are at least two kinds of people, those that can read while counting in their head, and those that can speak.
I always wondered why empirically derived differences in people, such as the above, was never used much in other studies. It seems that it would be a lot more interesting data point than the typical self-evaluation questionnaire that most psychology studies seem to use.
He lives life with a complete inability to experience anything that is not happening at that moment. He cannot picture his mother's face. He can't recall his life. He can't get a song stuck in his head. He can't hear any words in his head at all.
And yet he's an incredibly talented musician, writer, and teacher. When he sits at his piano, the music just happens. He can only compose while working at the instrument.
How common is the ability to picture people's faces in their heads? Is it more close to 60%, 90% or 99% of the population? I'm asking because I also don't have that ability. I think I lose the ability to picture people's faces a couple of seconds after seeing them, while preserving the ability to recognize them if I have seen them often enough.
"He can't recall his life."
What type of recall are you referring to? May I assume that factual recall is still present while visual, auditory and emotional recall is inactive?
Like, we have trouble when trying to accurately recreate an specific image from known data, but it's easy to recall scenes from memories. Which at the same time are so easy to misremember! I feel like I'm really bad at mentally creating still images, but can be easily fooled by mental scenes with movement. Should report as a bug in the issue tracker.
He can tell you a story about his life, but he can't think about his life. If he's not actively hearing the words of his life story come out of his mouth, he can't think about it.
Mentioning mostly in case you haven’t heard the term, I guess sharing this info can help so they don’t take it personally.
For reading, it depends on the genre, how well I know the topics, and complexity. I don't hear words in reading fiction. I just experience thoughts, feelings and action. If I'm confused, I need to reread and parse. And English isn't my mother tongue, so sometimes I need to diagram stuff. But if it's familiar stuff, it's words -> concepts.
When discussing this to the others, I have consistently gotten either completely baffled expressions as a reply, or people know exactly what I am talking about, and are equally surprised that it is even something worth mentioning.
What surprises me most out of all of this is how little this seemingly very different cognitive approach appears to affect our day-to-day ability to communicate with one another.