Question for NTs about how you think

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I think the fact you'd like 'inner voice' to be more concrete is what's interesting here. Your experiences are clearly in the same autistic ballpark as everyone else's and to me they seem totally normal and unremarkable. Ask an NT about their inner voice and it seems not to be an abstraction.

I still want ideas for experiments that don't involve gorillas. Think for me, Bagpuss.

I've had that happen before, in short bursts. It has to be the subconscious taking control or is left in control. I once drove my car for a lenght of some time, and suddenly found that it was dark out, and I had to find a gas station to get a road map to get back home. I didnt realize the day/night transition.I was zoned out for hours.

I'm not NT, and my inner voice is more or less a voice. Yes I can think nonverbally, but even when I do that voice is still making a running commentary.

This is what I gathered some posts ago, and I thought I missed something here, because the momentum is still moving forward >>>>.

I was under the impression that the conscious cognition of "NT's" were really not much different (in essence) than the others. There may be a higher correlation with a type.

I've often gotten the indelible impression that the pivotal difference is in ToM, as NT's experience theory of mind. Body language intuition in realtime. Then again, there was a member here that was HFA, and posted that they had as good body language comprehension as NT's, as with the full boat. Not surprising since this IQ is slanted the other way with HFA> non-verbal > verbal.

Ive got a hunch there isn't an either or , whether you look at the subconscious or conscious cognition.

It's a mix that has correlates.

I doubt that thinking styles have anything to do with theory of mind.

During my walk around the neighborhood today, very few words came into my mind. The only times when words came into my mind were when I was wondering if any words were coming into my mind. There was no running commentary. I saw a group of twenty or more crows perching on top of tall reeds together. Then, there was one crow perching on a reed by itself about ten sidewalk rectangles down the street.

Nor does Autism, so that makes sense.

I'm not sure if I was clear enough there V. :

If even one autistic ( we know there are some) is able to exercise ToM as per reading real time body language (intuitively), then subconscious "thinking styles" are not meaningful as a deciding vote in separating "NT" cognition from Autistic.

So far in this thread shows an array of 'conscious thinking' styles that correspond to "NT" types in some form.

No fundamental difference....

I believe I'm posting in the deep blue sea with this question, but is there a definitive item/detail that I missed, fraac?

My confusion was as to why it would even come up at all.

Now I'm confused

I think there is a fundamental difference. I would like more NTs to reply but it seems like they see their inner voice as themselves rather than a tool used by themselves. Only a couple of autistics gave answers that could be interpreted like that. That would be a very important difference. I also think it can be tested with mini gorillas.

Re ToM, I score very highly in every ToM test I've seen, including body language and facial expressions. People are my special interest so you would expect that.

I've been thinking about this subject some more and thought I'd share these thought, maybe others can recognise the same.

I don't think I have always had the inner voice, though it is hard to be one hundred percent sure as memory gets fuzzier the further back one goes. I don't remember it being significant or even there at all before about age 9-10 or so but became more and more an essential part of my sense of self and crucial to how I thought afterwards. But what I find significant about this is that at about the same time I began to experience a steady decline in my natural imagination and capabilities of my minds eye, both of which were very vivid. That is what I miss most from my childhood, the ability to become lost in fantastic daydreams. By my 20's I had almost entirely lost this powerful imagination.

I wonder if I have in effect traded one style of thought process for another, and that perhaps some people never make such a transition.

I think there is a difference between NT and AS thinking, but not in this way.

For me, using this voice is analogous to reading facial expressions consciously. It is not on by default, and I control its turning on and off, and it takes conscious effort to use it, just as it takes conscious effort to read facial expressions. An even more basic analogy is looking people in the eye. For me, it takes conscious effort to look people in the eye. For NTs, their eyes automatically lock into other people's eyes. One person told me that looking people in the eye is like breathing. She does not think about breathing, and she does not think about looking people in the eye. She just does. It feels awkward when she consciously thinks about breathng or looking people in the eye. For NTs without any comorbids, reading facial expressions and using the voice are probably similar in their automaticity to looking people in the eye automatically. For autistics, is that true? What are the proportions of NTs and autistics who look people in the eye automatically, read facial expressions automatically, or use the voice automatically?

It's not really using the voice per se, the voice is just there, and it's there automatically. However, none of the other things you brought up are automatic for me.

Do you breath in manual mode all the time?


I used to think I was the voice/thoughts until I read "The Power of Now " and I noticed that I'm still me if I "don't think", by that time I believed that thinking = using inner voice and thinking in pictures = imagining.
I will see if I open a topic in my college's forum to get more NT's answers.

Last edited by Doubutsu on 31 Jan 2012, 3:40 pm, edited 3 times in total.