Filmmaking is a very hard thing to do. In a story, you can write exactly what’s happening, but in a movie, you have to show everything properly so that everything fits together. It’s a delicate process that you can easily mess up. One issue is showing a character’s thoughts to the audience. There are many ways to do this–body language, soliloquy, monologuing, etc. However, a more common way is using internal monologue, i.e. the audience hearing the voice of the character saying thoughts in their head. This is a very common method of showing thoughts, but have you ever wondered if this is accurate?
What I mean is that not everyone has a voice, or internal monologue. Some people have it, but only when they are thinking about saying something. Some people just don’t have it at all. This is the same with mental imagery. Some people cannot envision images in their head. Some people have an inner monologue, but they don’t hear themselves saying it in their head.
The term for not having an inner voice (a recently created one) is anendophasia. The word for not being able to envision images is aphantasia, and there’s one more for not being able to produce sounds in their head, anauralia.
What really confuses me is why this hasn’t been researched nearly that much. Nearly everyone knows about “is your blue the same as my blue” but I haven’t seen many people talk about this very much. It’s especially important because it may be the reason we learn things very differently. People who can draw very well may have this ability because of hyperphantasia, or an increased ability to perceive images in their head. There are possibly people who can’t envision things or think using words. If so, they may have problems with speech because they don’t generally think in words. However, if people think in inner monologue, maybe that has the effect of slowing down people’s thoughts. For example, when reading I only truly understands the words if I hear them in my head. This may mean that I’m thinking slowly or inefficiently. I can also only type things out when I hear them in my head.
One more thing that I have in mind is how people without a voice in their head react to it inside of media. When this happens, do they actually get confused? I would assume they do, but if they really did, then why is this not a popular topic? Regardless, I hope this topic becomes more prevalent in the future.