This is actually one of my most thought about questions. When you think, do you "hear" an internal monologue like in a movie/tv show?
For me, it only happens when I'm writing something, to make sure the dialogue sounds natural. Otherwise it's completely quiet, unless a song gets stuck in my head. Is this too odd of a question?
"Tattoos are the mullets of the aughts." - Mike Naimark
Originally posted by ZundianThis is actually one of my most thought about questions. When you think, do you "hear" an internal monologue like in a movie/tv show?
For me, it only happens when I'm writing something, to make sure the dialogue sounds natural. Otherwise it's completely quiet, unless a song gets stuck in my head. Is this too odd of a question?
I've always wondered too. I'm pretty much the former, "internal monologue" guy and I'll have discussions with myself (no, I don't call myself "self") sometimes, but usually it's just talking things out, internally. Like how they do on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. I just discuss.
It used to be more JD-like when I was younger.
(edited by Zeruel on 6.2.09 1658)
-- 2006 Time magazine Person of the Year --
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." — George W. Bush - June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.
Mine is a lot more like a Google search and then quickly flipping through the results. I'm constantly cross-referencing everything I know about the people around me, with every similar interaction, or individual to create a predictive model of what is likely to happen or be useful for the people around me. I'm also processing information about the location, smells, tastes, etc. More of sitting down at a mult-screen control center looking at pictures, charts, video, audio, text... all at the same time.
When I write it is sort of a washed out version of this, so everything is playing out like a movie, but some of the details aren't clear until I focus on them.
This system of thinking is starting to make me feel brain-damaged as I age and can't deal with as many things at once. When I'm fully rested, fed, and reasonably happy I can do it at full force. If I'm lacking on any of those fronts it starts dropping the number of things I can think about at once... and sometimes the thing my brain drops is not the most useless item I was dealing with. Like it seems to drop spacial related things first--where I just moved something to, or how close to that pole I'm walking.
Interesting question. I suspect that Lise's style is more common among women than among men; it will be interesting to see how the men and women here differ. I'm definitely an internal monologue kind of person.
For me, it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm replaying a conversation in my head or predicting a future conversation, then I will definitely hear my own voice as well as the other participants in my head. Non-conversational thoughts may not be internally verbalized, but they are processed in a similarly linear manner.
When I have a project that I'm excited about or a close deadline, I find that my focus narrows to the point where my internal dialogue becomes keywords and I dart from one keyword thought to the next, diving deeper and deeper into whatever I'm thinking about. It takes a relatively long time to achieve this state of mind and I can't consciously decide to enter it, but it's what I consider the peak of my mental efficiency.
Occasionally, I can get so deep that it will take me several moments to be able to speak to someone that comes up to my desk, during which time I'm trying to break out of the train of thought that I've been following. Once I've broken out of that train of thought, I will completely forget what I've been doing and it will take several minutes at a minimum to return to that level of concentration and recover my place on the train, though it's still less time than it took to achieve that place to begin with.
This may sound dumb but when I am trying to solve a problem I essentially try to not think about it but sort of empty my mind and perform a nonthinking task. Usually that helps me have that "aha" moment. It seems the deeper I think about issues, the less focused I am. I also try to eliminate conventional thinking and eliminate the obvious stuff as it prevents me from opening my mind to other possibilities.
For mundane stuff, I just carry on a conversation with myself.
(edited by DrDirt on 9.2.09 0953) Perception is reality
Chalk up another one for the constant internal monologues.
Mostly basic decision making stuff, or playing through conversations and scenarios if something suitably important is on the horizon. Occasionally random memories will trigger a puzzled look as I try to figure out when or where X happened or something. And yeah, if I'm tired/tipsy/generally not paying attention there's a good chance I'll say stuff out loud that I don't mean as well.
Alas, whilst it's constant it is not consistent so I can quite easily flick from one thing to another based on some tenuous subconscious link without fully meaning to, and end up thinking about something completely different from that which started the thought process.
As a result, a decent proportion of my adult life is spent staring at files I've just opened or rooms I've just walked into, wondering what the hell I'm doing. You would think you would become more focussed as you grow up, but I swear it never happened to me when I was a kid.
Either way, if I tried to go with the Google search approach, and process and assimilate smells, tastes etc on even a semi-conscious level I'm pretty sure my brain would go into meltdown by breakfast.
Originally posted by KJames199I'm a definite interior-monologue kind of guy. It is constant. And if I'm not paying attention, I speak it out loud. Good times.
Ditto. If I am alone in the car and deep in thought, I can go into full self-conversation mode. And once, I even started the "thinking aloud" while my girlfriend was sitting in the passenger's seat. I'll be ready for the padded room any day now.
Originally posted by LisaThis system of thinking is starting to make me feel brain-damaged as I age and can't deal with as many things at once. When I'm fully rested, fed, and reasonably happy I can do it at full force.
I need at least six hours of sleep to multi-task effectively. And I would be DESTROYED today if I had to pull any of the back-to-back all-nighters I pulled in college.
We all have ways of coping. I use sex and awesomeness.
Originally posted by KJames199I'm a definite interior-monologue kind of guy. It is constant. And if I'm not paying attention, I speak it out loud. Good times.
Ditto. If I am alone in the car and deep in thought, I can go into full self-conversation mode. And once, I even started the "thinking aloud" while my girlfriend was sitting in the passenger's seat. I'll be ready for the padded room any day now.
Originally posted by LisaThis system of thinking is starting to make me feel brain-damaged as I age and can't deal with as many things at once. When I'm fully rested, fed, and reasonably happy I can do it at full force.
I need at least six hours of sleep to multi-task effectively. And I would be DESTROYED today if I had to pull any of the back-to-back all-nighters I pulled in college.
There is a study or two that says even though we think we "multi-task", the fact is we don't and can't. I don't know personally as I don't really multi-task. I juggle several things at once but am really just working on each in seperate bits.
Originally posted by DrDirtThere is a study or two that says even though we think we "multi-task", the fact is we don't and can't. I don't know personally as I don't really multi-task. I juggle several things at once but am really just working on each in separate bits.
Generally speaking, that's how a computer handles multiple processes. It works on a task for so many cycles, then switches to the next. If it isn't trying to work on too many tasks at once and there isn't a process that's taking up all of the cycles, then it switches quickly enough that it appears to be handling all of the processes simultaneously.
With that in mind, I'm willing to say that a person is multi-tasking when they can switch between tasks quickly enough to appear to be working on them simultaneously. I can do it for tasks that don't require a lot of thought if I have performed the tasks enough that they have become mostly automatic, but not for more than a few hours. For thought-intensive work or new tasks, the context-switching totally kills my productivity. My boss is great at it and she doesn't really understand why most of the rest of us can't "hot swap" from one process to another and back again.