Inner voice - reading versus mathematics

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I thought everyone thought/read out loud in their heads, like I do. Guess I just learned my something new for the day.

My inner voice is always present, whether it be reading, math, completing physical tasks, having conversations, etc. Back when I had difficulty sleeping, it was this inner voice that would keep me up. Once I learned to quite the voice, I began to find that I could go to sleep much quicker than before.

I have always been a very fast reader, but think most of the time there is still an inner voice - even though someone speaking at that speed would be almost unintelligible (I process spoken speech much more poorly and slowly - when I was a child I would say 'what?' all the time to give myself some time to process things I had been told, and I still absorb written information much better than verbal - I often have problems following conversations on the radio for example). If I try to speed read something then the inner voice can go, but the information doesn't go in - so it is OK for speed reading where you are just on the alert for something interesting but not useful if I actually want to remember what I have read.

I think most people who read fast take in information over a general area, rather than just the word they are innerly speaking - this allows you to anticipate what is coming up and aids speed, but the inner voice is still needed to put it all together in a meaningful way otherwise it is a disparate mass of words. When I read in French (a non native language that I became semi fluent in a few years ago) I read more slowly and my inner voice is very clear - in fact I will often mouth or whisper words out loud in order to comprehend better. It just hasn't reached the level of proficiency that I have in reading English (and never will).

I am also relatively good at mental arithmetic, but don't get answers coming from nowhere unless very simple and familiar. I tend to sort of visualise numbers and the spaces between them in my head and work out things from that. More complicated calculations do require an inner voice in order to keep certain bits of information in my working memory, but in general this is more of a visual/spatial thing for me.

I don't think I usually have an inner voice when I'm reading, the words just "are." But it seems to vary. When I am reading a book by a skilled author, reading is like riding a wave. I think this has caused me difficulties in being able to write, like writing a story, because when I'm reading I don't really think about the words, I just absorb their meaning. (I had never thought of this before I read this thread.)

I have no great facility for math. Except for a few shortcuts, like adding together numbers that I add all the time, so I automatically know what they add up to, I have to stop to figure something out. But it still doesn't come with a voice, it's more like pattern recognition. And if a problem is more challenging, I have to write it down, but I am more likely to make a little diagram than slogging through it verbally.

No. I hear the voice when I'm reading, then, as far as I've noticed, the voice is the same while I'm doing mathematics.

As in, I read 'My name is Tom' and '63 > 62' in the same voice.