To those who don’t have an internal monologue: what’s that like?

A study supposedly found that some participants had no internal monologue, but that really can't be the case. It's a flaw in the data gathering method. There ARE individuals known to lack an inner monologue, those raised in total language deprivation, and while they are whole, feeling human beings, they're also mentally hamstrung in ways that are immediately obvious. Tl;Dr: anyone who can say, "Upon self-reflection, I realize I actually don't have an inner voice" has just proven they have one.

Everyone who can plan and execute speech events (including in sign language) uses this skill. To suggest otherwise is like saying some humans see color without eyes: that people are arriving at the exact same developmental milestones, and accomplishing the exact same mental tasks, with some of them lacking a vital organ involved in the process, and that these two groups are indistinguishable to most observers.

Which is more likely: that two completely different information processing /speech producing systems have evolved in parallel (with and without the internal monologue), one of which has no known genetic and social evolutionary pathways by which it could have developed, and which occurs in certain individuals through some sort of non-linear inheritance - or that certain people simply perceive the same mental events differently, responding to surveys as though they have no inner voice? Some people exercise their inner monologue all day long, quietly chattering to themselves about everything, while others think mostly in pictures, only using the voice when they're preparing to explain something to somebody. The latter would say they "don't think in words" because it seems that way by comparison.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent