Why Some People Think in Words, While Others Think in Pictures & Feelings

"Take the sur­prise some have expressed in recent years upon find­ing out that the expres­sion to "pic­ture" some­thing in one's head isn't just a fig­ure of speech. You mean that peo­ple "pic­tur­ing an apple," say, haven't been just think­ing about an apple, but actu­al­ly see­ing one in their heads? The inabil­i­ty to do that has a name: aphan­ta­sia, from the Greek word phan­ta­sia, "image," and prefix - a, "with­out.""

"That same tem­plate has late­ly been used to cre­ate anoth­er term, anen­dopha­sia, whose roots endo and pha­sia mean "inner" and "speech." As you might expect, the word refers to the lack of an inter­nal mono­logue. That sounds bizarre to many who hear it for the first time: some because they can't imag­ine think­ing in words, and oth­ers because they can't imag­ine think­ing in any­thing else."

"These, as explained in the Void­ed Thoughts video above, are just some of the ways the expe­ri­ences inside our heads dif­fer. Some 40 per­cent of us hear and even have con­ver­sa­tions with "inter­nal voic­es," about 50 per­cent of us see things in our mind's eye instead, and some 20 per­cent report think­ing exclu­sive­ly in feel­ings. Those who belong to one of those groups will have trou­ble imag­in­ing what life is like for any­one in the oth­ers."

Inner mental life differs widely among people. Some experience internal monologues and conversations, about 40 percent. About 50 percent experience visual imagery in a mind's eye. Some 20 percent think primarily in feelings. Specific terms name particular differences: aphantasia describes lacking mental imagery, and anendophasia describes lacking an internal verbal stream. Those within one experiential group often have difficulty imagining what cognition feels like for people in other groups. Many people are surprised to discover that common metaphors like "picturing" are literal for some and absent for others. The coinage of specific terms has made these differences more visible and easier to discuss.

Read at Open Culture