Part of this auto-pilot is learning to recognize if you have the answer or not. I will not launch into a sentence without a strong feeling I understand the topic and know what to say. I just don't need to prepare the exact words in order to do it. I still consciously "check" that I know, but that just requires a boolean answer instead of a word by word crafted sentence.
Like
[Conceptual stage] --??-- consciousness
V
[Verbalization stage] --??-- consciousness
V
[Vocalization]
So if you don't have conscious access to verbalization, you only realize how a thought "will sound" after you say it. Conversely, if you don't have conscious access to conceptualization, you end up thinking that "thinking" always involves "thinking out loud", because "thinking out loud" (verbalizing) is the only way you have to query your conceptual layer. You literally only become aware of your own thinking after the thought is already pretty far along. At the extreme, you can have conscious access to neither stage and require vocalization to reflect on your own thinking.
> Conversely, if you don't have conscious access to conceptualization, you end up thinking that "thinking" always involves "thinking out loud", because "thinking out loud" (verbalizing) is the only way you have to query your conceptual layer. You literally only become aware of your own thinking after the thought is already pretty far along
What I'm saying is that even if you do have conscious access to verbalisation stage, the more you force yourself to let it be handled subconsciously, the better at communicating quickly and effectively. This is what I meant by autopilot.
Spending active conversation time on conscious verbalization seems to me as inefficient as verbalising words and "speaking them out" as you read a book, usually known as subvocalization.
I tend to think of consciousness as the "debug mode" of the brain.
I’m thinking training on movies/tv has the physical element that pure text is missing.
I think there's something like a stage design in the brain:
- symbolic or model deliberation
- verbal expression
- vocalization
And each of those stages can be consciously introspected on, but people will naturally develop more or less ability to introspect on it. I think when people say they "don't mentally verbalize", what is actually happening is they just haven't happened to develop conscious introspection of the verbal expression stage. But I'd expect that this can be trained.
(Conversely, sometimes people introspect so much on verbal expression that it becomes an inherent part of the way they think. Brains are weird and wonderful!)