As an exercise of meditation this was new for me as I have avoided meditation until now (mostly because of its lack of theory and risk of self modification into unwanted directions). But these exercises had a clear focus and goal—so I tried.
Exercise 1
I didn’t subvocalize much.
After a few seconds of concentration on sleepiness (as a method of inducing inner silence and with closed eyes) the first subvoc was
“Hm, this is interes...”
cut off by
“Oh, I’m subvocalizing”
cut off by concentration on sleepiness again.
I felt patterns about the experience not yet named concepts but of the same quality as the mental content that activates when I
mentally switch to a new topic. The required background concepts that are needed to deal with the topic (esp. for knowledge heavy topics).
I didn’t let these concepts subvocalize. At least mostly so. My thoughts never formed more than a few words of incomplete
sentences.
I’m not clear where the border between subvocalizing (which I think I do not do much consciously anyway) and ‘thinking’ in general is.
I didn’t set a timer but I usually can guess a minute to a few seconds and I stopped a bit before this.
Exercise 2
I also closed my eyes but let my thought wander about this topic.
It was the typical stream of consciousness with the inner moderator which keeps track of the topic and refocuses the thought streams on the topic. I thought things like in this paragraph (only less formulated).
I cut this exercise short when it became clear that it was basically my normal mode of pre-sleep letting-thought-wander-mode and I couldn’t figure out what might be differnt without going back to the post.
Exercise 3
I’m not clear about this exercise. Reflecting on text read is normal, or?
Reading text doesn’t feel like subvocalizing to me.
If the meaning of the text read isn’t immediately clear I may reread it more slowly and that does feel like subvocalizing and I then can observe the sentence as if someone has spoken it.
Changing pitch, speaker or speed of the text read is not unusal to me.
It is required if you read books to children, because you have to edit them on the fly.
But this editing has to be done faster than subvocalizing so I don’t think reading is subvocalizing.
At least it is not if you are skimming or cross-reading or doing the pre-editing needed for e.g. chilrens book reading
But maybe I am not a usual candiate for this as I am a fast reader (once able to cross read 25 pages a minute).
Interestingly if I read text from someone I am familiar with I can hear their voice when I read their sentences
including their timing, chuckles etc. (at least a felt equivalence to that).
Summary
This was interesting experience and you post has given me some more insights into what meditation is and that I am using something like meditation on a self-tought basis.
As an exercise of meditation this was new for me as I have avoided meditation until now (mostly because of its lack of theory and risk of self modification into unwanted directions). But these exercises had a clear focus and goal—so I tried.
Exercise 1
I didn’t subvocalize much. After a few seconds of concentration on sleepiness (as a method of inducing inner silence and with closed eyes) the first subvoc was
“Hm, this is interes...”
cut off by
“Oh, I’m subvocalizing”
cut off by concentration on sleepiness again.
I felt patterns about the experience not yet named concepts but of the same quality as the mental content that activates when I mentally switch to a new topic. The required background concepts that are needed to deal with the topic (esp. for knowledge heavy topics).
I didn’t let these concepts subvocalize. At least mostly so. My thoughts never formed more than a few words of incomplete sentences.
I’m not clear where the border between subvocalizing (which I think I do not do much consciously anyway) and ‘thinking’ in general is.
I didn’t set a timer but I usually can guess a minute to a few seconds and I stopped a bit before this.
Exercise 2
I also closed my eyes but let my thought wander about this topic.
It was the typical stream of consciousness with the inner moderator which keeps track of the topic and refocuses the thought streams on the topic. I thought things like in this paragraph (only less formulated).
I cut this exercise short when it became clear that it was basically my normal mode of pre-sleep letting-thought-wander-mode and I couldn’t figure out what might be differnt without going back to the post.
Exercise 3
I’m not clear about this exercise. Reflecting on text read is normal, or?
Reading text doesn’t feel like subvocalizing to me.
If the meaning of the text read isn’t immediately clear I may reread it more slowly and that does feel like subvocalizing and I then can observe the sentence as if someone has spoken it.
Changing pitch, speaker or speed of the text read is not unusal to me. It is required if you read books to children, because you have to edit them on the fly. But this editing has to be done faster than subvocalizing so I don’t think reading is subvocalizing. At least it is not if you are skimming or cross-reading or doing the pre-editing needed for e.g. chilrens book reading
But maybe I am not a usual candiate for this as I am a fast reader (once able to cross read 25 pages a minute).
Interestingly if I read text from someone I am familiar with I can hear their voice when I read their sentences including their timing, chuckles etc. (at least a felt equivalence to that).
Summary
This was interesting experience and you post has given me some more insights into what meditation is and that I am using something like meditation on a self-tought basis.