The extent to which people experience “inner speech” varies greatly, and the differences matter for performing certain cognitive tasks
Participants with weak inner voices did worse at psychological tasks that measure, say, verbal memory than did those with strong inner voices. The researchers have even proposed calling a lack of inner speech “anendophasia” and hope that naming it will help facilitate further research. The study adds to growing evidence that our inner mental worlds can be profoundly different. “It speaks to the surprising diversity of our subjective experiences,” Lupyan says.
Psychologists think we use inner speech to assist in various mental functions.
It also seems like thinking would take longer if all your thoughts had to be words. I will sit over here smugly without an inner monolog.
Generally mine are abstract on the first pass, and the monologue comes in as I solidify the concepts into communicable terms. It’s good for collapsing vibes into a discrete logical progression.
It does seem like it would be inefficient to put thoughts into words just to think them, but what i’ve gathered from talking about this subject over the years is that for them, the words are the thoughts. Instead of translating abstractions into language they translate language into abstractions. People with very active inner speech might think “I should go to the park today” where I would just think I should go to the park today.