News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right?.

Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by jerf on Tuesday February 23, 2016 @06:31PM (#11163247)
I do, and I don't. If you imagine there's some form of pipeline in your brain from sound to phonemes to words to concepts to comprehension, my reading probably comes in right at the "words" level. I "hear" the words like I hear them when real people are speaking them, but they do not really have "sounds" or "phonemes". When reading fiction, I may pick up accent if the author is spelling it out but I generally have no voice particularly in mind for a character. Not a "neutral" voice, it's really no voice whatsoever. Just words.

For one thing, if a real voice was speaking at the speed I normally read, it would be virtually incomprehensible. I can't be simply "sounding out words" for that reason.

I imagine people come in at different places in the pipeline and that probably explains the difference. There more phases of the pipeline than there are common words to try to explain our experience.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by normac on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @04:46AM (#11165601)
Count me in on this as well. It's very strange because it's not a voice, but in some sense there is sound--I can "hear" when there's a rhyme, for instance.

I've heard it claimed that the reason some people think they dream in black and white is that there wasn't any color content at all (not even grayscale). They think back and can't remember any colors, and assume it must have been grayscale, because their waking consciousness can't imagine what it would be like to see something without color.

Similarly, it's hard to imagine how you could hear words with no voice speaking them (at least it's hard for me) even though we're experiencing it right now!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? by dimfeld on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @01:07AM (#11164865)
My inner voice is much the same. I never realized until reading this article that some people do have an "audible" component to theirs. Very interesting.
[ Parent | on HN ]