Don't Have A Voice In Your Head? You Might Be Experiencing 'Anendophasia'

Researchers have long assumed that having an inner voice is a universal human experience, but a new study reveals that this isn't the case. Approximately 5-10% of the population doesn't have an inner voice, which can affect their performance on certain memory tests, the study found. This phenomenon, recently dubbed "anendophasia," was only formally identified last year. "People are ignorant about the characteristics of their own inner experience. And it doesn't matter how confident you are," Russell Hurlburt, a psychology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told AFP.

Mr Hurlburt studied this phenomenon by having participants describe their thoughts while reading Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' at random intervals. The study found that instead of hearing words in their inner voice, some people create visual images or "their video" of the book. According to Mr Hurlburt, people may be "inner speaking" around 20-25% of the time, but more research is needed to confirm this estimate. 

People also have different kinds of inner speech. Some have multiple voices, while bilingual people can switch languages.

Understanding 'Anendophasia'

Linguists Johanne Nedergard from the University of Copenhagen and Gary Lupyan from the University of Wisconsin-Madison introduced the term 'anendophasia' to describe the phenomenon where individuals lack the internal conversations that most people experience in their minds. The internal dialogue that people often experience plays a crucial role in various cognitive functions. Inner speech can vary significantly among adults, ranging from abundant to almost absent.

Studies have shown that an 'Anendophasia' can have a significant impact on certain aspects of cognition, particularly those involving verbal working memory and rhyme judgments. While some people may experience a rich and constant internal dialogue, others may have little to no inner speech. This variability can have important implications for cognitive performance, particularly in tasks that rely heavily on verbal working memory.

Research has shown that individuals with minimal inner speech tend to perform lower on tasks involving verbal working memory and rhyme judgments. However, the absence of inner speech does not uniformly affect all cognitive processes. For example, task-switching abilities, which involve switching between different mental tasks, remain unaffected in individuals with an Anendophasia.

Pros And Cons of 'Anendophasia'

Many people attribute their lack of anxiety and ease with meditation to their absence of an inner voice. This perspective is supported by Daniel Gregory, a philosopher specializing in inner speech, who suggests that having more inner speech can make individuals more susceptible to negative thought patterns and rumination. 

But we can also "use inner speech to encourage ourselves, to give ourselves positive messages", he told AFP.

Johanne Nedergard, a postdoc and linguist at the University of Copenhagen, noted that individuals without an inner voice often describe their experience as challenging and time-consuming. According to Mr Nedergard, these individuals must expend extra effort to translate their thoughts into words, making everyday communication and cognitive tasks more laborious.

"Some say that they think in pictures and then translate the pictures into words when they need to say something. Others describe their brain as a well-functioning computer that just does not process thoughts verbally, and that the connection to the loudspeaker and microphone is different from other people. And those who say that there is something verbal going on inside their heads will typically describe it as words without sound," he told Science Daily.