I am one of those who does not subvocalize at all.
Is there any ‘sensory’ process which seems to take its place, like a stream of imaginary images instead, or does it seem like other people have this extra thing going on which you don’t?
When I read a fiction book or listen to a sound recording it feels like there is a direct connection between the words and my brain, with relevant images, sounds, feelings and ideas popping up inside. This flow tends to be interrupted when something in the story or in its delivery stops making sense, syntactically, semantically or logically. Then I have to disengage the default direct access method and go through the delivery medium to make sense of it. I don’t know how common this is.
Non-fiction is completely different, there the medium is never transparent. Except for that one time when I first read an intro linear algebra text and it just made sense, with the images of lines, planes, rotations and intersections just showing up in the right places for many theorems, lemmas and calculations. I take it that this is a much more common feeling for those with aptitude for math, if not totally in the Will Hunting way.
Sounds familiar, it used to feel like that when I read a lot of fiction. These days I read maybe one or two fiction books per year, and my imagination is a lot bleaker.
Is there any ‘sensory’ process which seems to take its place, like a stream of imaginary images instead, or does it seem like other people have this extra thing going on which you don’t?
When I read a fiction book or listen to a sound recording it feels like there is a direct connection between the words and my brain, with relevant images, sounds, feelings and ideas popping up inside. This flow tends to be interrupted when something in the story or in its delivery stops making sense, syntactically, semantically or logically. Then I have to disengage the default direct access method and go through the delivery medium to make sense of it. I don’t know how common this is.
Non-fiction is completely different, there the medium is never transparent. Except for that one time when I first read an intro linear algebra text and it just made sense, with the images of lines, planes, rotations and intersections just showing up in the right places for many theorems, lemmas and calculations. I take it that this is a much more common feeling for those with aptitude for math, if not totally in the Will Hunting way.
Sounds familiar, it used to feel like that when I read a lot of fiction. These days I read maybe one or two fiction books per year, and my imagination is a lot bleaker.
How much fiction do you read?