I have an inner monologue but it's on like a half-second delay behind the actual thought. Like, I can picture a pineapple without thinking of the word pineapple first. Sometimes an entire sentence worth of meaning will form in an instant but the words don't come until I'm trying to speak or type the thought out. Sometimes I can't access a word at all, even though the concept is clear in my head and I know there is a specific word for this specific flavor of the concept.

Also, I can't rotate a cube in my mind's eye, but I can rotate a chicken.

Brains are weird.

Up to as much as more than half of all people.

Lack of inner monologue doesn’t mean lack of thoughts. People without an inner monologue just don’t think in words. They can still think up concepts and ideas like everyone else.

I for once have an outer monologue. Makes for awkward moments whenever my SO hears me...

Conservatives explained.

Buddy you can just think out loud in the shower, nobody will stop you. For that matter you can think I got a lot pretty much anywhere, though you do get looks in the grocery store I find.

Just because you don't have an inner monologue doesn't mean you are incapable of thought, or showerthoughts if we're getting specific

Google gave me mostly AI slop and pop psychology, but this article is an in-depth summary of the literature on the topic of inner speech, for anyone interested (and dedicated - it’s long and very technical).

It doesn’t seem to justify dichotomizing people into those who “have it” and those who don’t. Research looks mostly focused on what cognitive or developmental purpose it serves.

Inner speech can be defined as the subjective experience of language in the absence of overt and audible articulation. This definition is necessarily simplistic: as the following will demonstrate, experiences of this kind vary widely in their phenomenology, their addressivity to others, their relation to the self, and their similarity to external speech.

So, it’s on a spectrum, highly subjective, and difficult to talk about with precision.

I personally do not normally think in words, but I certainly rehearse/relive conversations. I also complain to myself with words when I am really miserable, I think it’s comforting to “say it out loud” (inside). Do I have an inner monologue?

I process thoughts visually, as typed text. It’s like a fucking ticker tape when I get going having random thoughts and I definitely experience shower thoughts.

I refuse to believe this statistic. The only way to study this is by asking people and I bet most simply aren't aware that they do have it. I didn't pay much attention to it either untill I started meditating and now I'm painfully aware of it.

Do people without an inner monologue "hear" the words they read as they read them?

Tangentially related, but the fox game show “1% club” is, perhaps unintentionally, a fascinating demonstration of how vastly different people think through logic problems.

The premise is the contestants go through a series of questions already asked to a sample of Americans and progress in order of how “difficult” they are based on how many got them wrong.

The interesting part comes when there can be a significant gap in what I perceive the difficulty to be between questions. Sometimes I may have trouble with an “easy” one but get a significantly “tougher” one no problem.

It seems like lunacy to me, but all it really means most times is the format or mechanics of the logic needed for the answer is just more natural to me than the majority of the sample.

I distinctly recall thinking inner monologues were a "neat idea" after seeing them on TV as a child and thinking it would be a useful skill to learn. I never did though

... Are you suggesting we are incapable of thought? My mind wanders just like anyone else's.

I was today years old when I learned that many people don't have an inner monologue. The human body is so fascinating.

Oddly enough, if I don't take my ADHD meds, I tend to talk to myself out loud a lot because my inner monologue gets kind of "muffled" in the "noise" and I rely on it very heavily to think through.