Inner voice - reading versus mathematics

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I was recently discussing and noticing the inner voice when reading. When I read, I always hear my voice reading the words out loud inside my head - my reading is relatively slow, but very accurate, so although most people can read faster than me, my comprehension and retention tends to be better.

I also notice that there is some component of the brain that reads ahead silently - if someone snatches a text away, I am conscious of the content far ahead of where my inner voice reached. I am also frequently aware of words or phrases that interest me in blocks of text (newspapers on display, for instance) and have to stop and read the whole thing to find them.

In complete contrast, my mathematics is completely silent. When I receive change, I am instantly aware of the amount of coin and whether there is any error, without being aware of calculating. I hear no inner voice when I do accounts or other kinds of mathematics. However, when I get very tired or stressed, this skill disappears and I revert to elementary level verbal mathematics and consciously count, carrying over or holding remainders in words - and obviously this is slow, and annoys the hell out of the queue behind me because I have to finish.

Does anyone else have different reading and mathematics inner voices? Or know why the reading voice never disappeared, as apparently it does for most people during their teenage years?

Yeah, I have this too, but it can also be when im thinking. Its a little difficult to describe. One voice is much faster, thought what it says is soon forgotten (Sub-onscious perhaps?) the second is more like an echo that I will remember most of the time I don't hear the first but when I do there is a large difference in speeds.

As for maths, though not so much now as the work is harder, I often suddenly had the answear with no recollection of working it out, it was always right, but it slightly confusd me, (Most?) people can't do pythagorous in their head in the milliseconds I did. Heh, wish it still did now, could have been a great trick if I could control it

Well, I tend to find I do this more when I have a day that I am much closer to AS than others, usually by then i'm finding it difficult to communicate what-so-ever.
Nice to know im not too alone here
Hmm, I also wondered if their could be a link with lucid dreaming, they tended to happen on the same day.

If I remember there was a post about AS being very high functioning and the possibility that we simply was over-aware sort of like being in overdrive so most stimuli greatly affected us and the like.

I sort of do that, especially the maths. I described doing math to someone once as a kind of meditation because my mind just goes silent and i seem to just do it. Only annoying thing was I tended not to show my working as I'd be writing step 1 down and in my head i'd already be at step 5 so I'd just skip to writing step 5 after step 1. But with reading i "vocalise" every word in my head as i read it.

"know why the reading voice never disappeared, as apparently it does for most people during their teenage years?"
I did not know that was supposed to happen
Are there any links to articles or research on this?

I kind of do this, too. It makes me a relatively slow but thorough reader. Sometimes I'm even kind of half-memorizing something! (and it's more like I'm allowing myself to do this than pushing myself to). Fine, this is a strength, I accept it as a strength. At the same time, I experiment with adding other skills of skimming. To me, reading almost IS hearing that internal voice.

Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 10 Jan 2011, 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have never noticed whether or not I get an inner voice while doing math, but I do all the time while reading. Just like you I have always read slower than some, but tend to comprehend what I'm reading better than most people. I have always wondered why I read so slow, yet have always had above average reading comprehension and vocabulary. If it's something more common among people on the autism spectrum it would explain alot.

Please tell us more about this! For me, lucid dreaming is a subtle phenomenon, although still very worth pursuing, and in zen like fashion more a matter of allowing to happen.

If I wake up, do have to go anyway in a hurry so am relaxed, and liked my last dream. If I make my way to the bathroom primarily by feel, maybe briefly opening my eyes to orient myself, then closing my eyes again. Then come back to my bed by feel, crawl back in. Sometimes I can re-enter the wisps of that last drem.

sepultura is autistic.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXWrmXPE_h8[/youtube]

I am the opposite of you. I don't have a reading voice. The words just are as soon as I see them. But unlike you, I am not instantly aware of correct (or incorrect) change or any other computation. (Or rather, I am like you at your most stressed out and slow). I have a slow, ponderous inner voice that counts the change in my head, "It cost 75 cents and I gave her one dollar so here's my 25 cents change". There is no subconscious knowledge that the quarter in my hand is correct and if it were a dime I would have a ponderous voice in my head saying "It cost 75 cents and I gave her one dollar so I get 25 cents back. Hey! That's a dime! A dime is less than 25 cents" and 5 slow seconds later I would say, "I was supposed to get a quarter in change".

I stand amazed at people who just know with no inner voice making the calculation with a 9 year old's deliberation to get it right. Yet I don't have any inner voice for reading and don't find that amazing. I have dyscalcula so I assume that's why the math inner voice sticks around. I can't make those calculations subconsciously the way I can know the meaning of words subconsciously.

My math voice has a performance anxiety disorder. It stutters, fumbles and quickly pulls an answer out of somewhere which is slightly off the correct answer. But it'll do, I tell myself.

I have the reading voice too. My reading voice is like a tour guide, speaking the whole way through my journey. Sometimes the guide gets distracted and tells me about their thoughts. Then I scold it and tell it to just continue with the tour until the end of the chapter.
I see images when I read too but it involves a lot of concentration.
I must add I have the voice whether I read so or fast. Though I do comprehend better when I read slowly.

When I Speed Read I don't hear a voice.

ruveyn

When I read or speak, I can hear the words as thoughts. When I try to think in words without either, my thoughts get very slow and easily disrupted.

When I read fiction or daydream, it's like a full-blown movie screen just lit up behind my eyes.

I can do arithmetic mentally, but not instantly. I don't do it in the way that's taught, and had to re-teach myself how to do math on paper to help my niece with her arithmetic. When I do, I think the numbers, but they go very quickly, unlike words.

When I think of people or places or objects I visualize them, although I immediately associate the appropriate language as well.

I tend to read in chunks of words at a time and rarely need to scan each word to get the meaning of the whole. It's like I see and understand a whole group simultaneously. It backfires a bit sometimes, but usually with just funny mis-read word type effects.
The inner voice is there sometimes but only when I slow down (for reasons which are unclear: I mean, I'm still understanding what I'm reading so why I slow isn't obvious to me) but generally, it's not. I just "hoover up" a whole page in no time.

If I'm spouting forth about a special interest then I'm not aware of thinking at all. The responses just pop up automatically and sometimes I'm aware that if I do start thinking (I've been asked a related but unexpected question, say), it's only because I'm quickly flashing up a selection of whole concepts (they feel a bit like a 3D picture but with a "meaning" dimension too) and selecting one as a response.

I've said elsewhere that I have the mathematical abilities of a table-lamp, so I'll quickly skip over that bit...

That reminds me of something written by someone who had a savant skill in calculating. I think it was Jerry Newport (but I'm not sure). Apparently, he could look and just instantly "see" the answer (to calculation problems) without needing to do any intricate processing.

I cannot even begin to fathom a form of thought process that doesn't involve my inner voice. At least not with regard to reading/writing and math. Does this really go away normally as the OP suggests? If so, what could be an explanation for those for whom it doesn't?

Some others have said that when using their inner voice they read or do the math slower but I always noticed I was above average in the speed and accuracy of my reading and in my math classes I was one of the fastest and most accurate. My math teachers always hated me for not showing my work though as I could do all but the longest of problems entirely in my head.

I did some Googling ("inner speech" or "subvocalization" work better than "inner voice") and it seems that the inner reading voice does not disappear for most people. It does disappear for the fastest readers, and part of Speed Reading training is to learn to switch it off.

Inner speech also applies to many other areas of problem solving (including maths), managing tasks and socializing. It seems that the inner speech of some of these activities (like socializing) disappears by age 8 or 9 for most people.

Researchers have established that the inner speech is disrupted or less effective for people with autistic spectrum disorders, which is what I suspected from my own experience. Experiments involving distracting the inner speech reduce task performance of people who do not have ASD, without having any effect on people who do have ASD.

Similar for me. I can't do simple math in my head like you describe with the coins, but ironically I'm able to do advanced math in my head. (I was able differentiate an equation faster than multiplying two numbers!) My memory from college of doing advanced math like calculus was just looking at the problem and seeing the answer, or maybe seeing the steps to the answer. "Seeing" is probably not the right word because it wasn't a visual experience. Perhaps "grok" is better, for you Heinlein fans. Same thing when thinking of object models in computer programming. When I'm dealing with patterns and abstractions then there is no voice. It's just patterns and abstractions. Though I do have an inner voice after the answer comes to debate the answer, beat it up and make sure it's solid.