Animisensi and the Power of Imaginary Sound
Roger Mann PhD
Updated November 2024
Introduction
You wake up. If an alarm wakes you, you reach over to silence the alarm. Then, your first thought of the day forms, perhaps a response to the memory of your agenda for the day. Maybe that thought is a curse, or maybe it is encouragement, or maybe it’s an order. Get Up. If not expressed out loud, that first thought is a silent word, silent language, in your language.
If you are lucky like me, there is no alarm. My first impulse when I wake up is to look toward the window to see if there is daylight. I may recall how I lost sleep due to unwanted thoughts. My first waking mental activity may not be a thought. Rather, I might recall a dream. In my dream, I experienced visual images, movement, and sometimes, sound and touch. My first thought of the day forms. “What the **** was that about?” As I get up, a melody forms in my mind. Often, it is the same song that I had ended with the night before.
These common experiences all involve sensations that are not real. At night, we dream. In dreams, we experience imaginary sights, motion, sounds, and touch. Dreams build on our memories of reality. But also, our waking minds can produce sensations that, like dreams, are not sensations in response to physical stimuli. Rather, they are a product of the mind only. One of these imaginary sensations is sound, often experienced as language or music, that builds on our memories of the sound of language or music.
The main thesis of this paper is that imaginary sound has profound purposes in the waking human mind. Imaginary sound is a normal, essential and important part of the human experience. For most people, imaginary sound is the basis for reading and thinking, and it enables activities such as praying, silent counting, silent practice of speech, self-motivation, and audiation; the silent practice or appreciation of music.
Nature is what we are born with, nurture is everything that happens to us. We are born with a brain and a brain plan that can grow into a storehouse of uncountable memories, some of which are memories of sensations. Our parents and other humans provide the experience that allows our brain’s potential to be realized. Part of that potential is imaginary sound.
The human mind is a busy place. The brain guides and manages our bodies, processes new information received by the senses, holds and manages memories, and synthesizes our current and past experiences into responses. The sensations we can experience are sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, pain and motion. The associated sensory organs include our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin and inner ears, with other tissues such as nerves assisting and conveying stimuli to the brain. Wherever sensations originate, they are experienced in the brain.
The human brain is also able to create sensations without any stimuli to the sensory organs. Many such sensations are involuntary. Dreams are generally involuntary. Lucid dreaming attempts to assert some voluntary control over dreams. Visual and auditory hallucinations are involuntary as are a variety of maladies that result in feelings of touch and pain where the location of the pain is actually unaffected. Sciatica, for example, is pain in the legs that is actually caused by an injury to the spine. The pain is very real even though the leg is not injured. Another example is the hypnic jerk, that sudden sensation of falling or imbalance experienced as we are trying to fall asleep. It has been hypothesized that this sensation evolved to reduce the chance of falling out of a tree while we sleep.
We also experience voluntary imaginary sensations. We can imagine sight, sound, smell and touch. We draw on memories of sensations to experience them again. Some words evoke a visual memory. If I say “Lion” or “Dragon” your mind may experience a fleeting visual image of these creatures. Similarly, we can involve memories of sounds, scents and touch by association with words that have strong associations with these sensations; try “thunder.” “mint” or “itchy.”
We can imagine sound because our brains can process sound just as we can dream visual images because our brains can process sight. Sounds are compared to memories of sounds to provide meaning. If you hear a spoken word and understand it, that’s because the word was in your memory.
Part of the thesis of this paper it that, as among the voluntary imaginary senses, sound has a special place. For most people, the imaginary sound ability has a profound influence on our everyday lives. We can use our sound memories silently. For most people, being awake means active use of imaginary language to plan, preview, complain, contemplate and review. For most of us, imaginary sound is a valuable tool applied to a variety of important purposes, but especially, thought.
Charles Fernyhough’s professional and groundbreaking thought and research embodied in his 2016 book The Voices Within develops a scientific baseline for evaluating and understanding inner voice. He describes thought, or “inner voice” as language, and he provides a detailed evaluation of “inner voice” and “thinking” based on years of experience and analysis. The Inner Voice Psychologists (IVPs, if I may) have devised ways to apply scientific methods to the study of inner voice. His book is one of the great science narratives of the century so far, in my opinion. The substantial body of literature involving inner voice provides important qualifications and caveats to the inner voice experience. For example, we now know that some people do not experience inner voice at all.
The IVPs have made a great contribution, but they do not go far enough in recognizing “inner voice” as imaginary sound, or the recognition of imaginary sound as an ability or skill, or the relationships between imaginary sound and other important, useful mental activities other than “inner voice.”
Let’s go there. But first, clarifications about terminology may help.
Terminology
Our understanding of the world around us is limited by the vocabulary we can recall and reference. Sometimes, existing words are inadequate. New concepts and new words must be developed. New words are created to describe new objects or concepts.
The English language does not have a single work that encompasses the range of sensations created only within the human mind. “Imaginary” is not quite right. Wilkinson and Fernyhough (2017) note that “. . . it seems misleading to speak of inner speech in terms of imagination.” They state that “inner speech is not, in virtue of its recruitment of auditory imagery, simply a kind of imagined speech. . . With inner speaking, you are not appreciating something non-actual: it is actual. You are speaking.”
I agree that “imagination” or “imaginary” is not quite right, because “imaginary” generally means “not real.” For example, an imaginary dream would be one that did not actually happen. A real dream, however, did happen. The dream may include sight, sound, motion and other sensations created within the mind, but it is not an imaginary dream. It is a real dream. This sensible logic about semantics leads the IVPs to conclude that inner voice is not “imaginary.” Dreams, hallucinations, inner voice and other creations of the mind are not truly imaginary because they are really happening in the mind.
The problem is that our language does not have a word that clearly differentiates imagination regarding unreal things or situations as opposed to the imagination of sensations. There is no word or phrase that encompasses the range of sensations experienced only in the mind. Cerebral sensations?
Perhaps we should follow western tradition to develop a new word from latin. We could combine “animi” meaning “of the mind” and “sensus” meaning “the senses” to obtain “animisensus.” Animisensi includes dreams, hallucinations, and the five imaginary sensations. Some happen when awake; others when asleep. Some are voluntary, some are not. We should recognize that senses are experienced by the human brain, and not all of these are generated by our sensory organs, and that is often normal. Normal minds have sensory experience in the absence of sensation. With dreaming, the mind can experience stunning sensations in the complete absence of stimuli. In the case of dreaming, it does this during sleep, involuntarily. During wakefulness, the human mind can imagine sound without hearing, but it is voluntary, often purposeful and directed to a variety of important purposes.
“Sound” is “sonus” in latin so “animisonus” is sound of the mind. Animisonus is a subset of animisensus. We use our animisonus ability to create original and silent language.
But do we really need these new terms? I don’t think so. As with many words, “imaginary” can mean different things. A quick tour of the internet leads to some competing interpretations of the word “imaginary.” One site that claims to “a library of answered questions” states that “imaginary sensations, such as seeing, hearing, or smelling things that do not exist in the real world are known as. . . hallucinations.” (Study.com, 2024) I disagree. Clearly, dreams are not hallucinations, and inner voice is not a hallucination.
The common use of “imagination” invokes childhood and alternative realities. A child may have imaginary friends, and that is normal. An adult with imaginary friends might be judged wanting. But imagination can also refer generally to perceptions in the mind that are unrelated to the information provided by the senses. Another internet site broadly defines visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and motor imagination. Auditory Imagination is “the ability to imagine sound in your mind without actually hearing with your ears.” (Immaginationspectrum.com, 2024) This definition clearly uses “imagination” as I would to describe imaginary sound.
Let’s return to the dream. An imaginary dream did not happen. But a dream does include imaginary sensations. They are sensations that did not actually happen. Similarly, an imaginary thought did not happen, but for most people, a thought requires an imaginary sensation of sound. The sound did not happen. I conclude that imaginary sound is a valid phrase because the subject, sound, is itself a sensation. Maybe others will conclude that we need a new word such as animisonus. Until then, I will continue with “imaginary sound.”
Speaking of ambiguity, another ambiguous word involves the verb “think.” A discussion of thinking and thought immediately invokes semantics. Thinking or thought ("thought" is the result of the process of "thinking") is a central part of our human identity and consciousness. A person who “does not think” is prone to disaster, and “great thinkers” lead us to new horizons. But such judgments beg a simple question. What is thought?
One use of the word “think” is synonymous with “believe” as in “I think it is true that. . .” Our discussion is concerned with thinking as an activity of the mind, something the mind does on its own, not as judgement about what one believes. The common definitions of “thinking” are ambiguous. Webster’s defines “think” as “to form or have in the mind.” Another answer defines thought as thinking (Laird 2002). This is a tautology, even less useful. Thought might also be defined by brain activity. Although technically correct, this definition does not explain the experience of thinking from the perspective of the thinker.
I have asked many people “What do you experience when you are thinking?” Most people do not have a ready answer. Is this not strange, that for one of the most heralded of human abilities, there is not a common go-to definition? What does this say about our understanding of ourselves? It is not astounding that there is no common definition or objective study of “thought” or “thinking.”
This is the great contribution of the IVPs. Until recently, there was no common scientific study of the process of thinking from the perspective of the thinker. Without delving too much into potential exceptions and caveats, “inner voice” is very closely related to “thinking,” and the IVPs have developed a useful science of thinking from the perspective of the thinker. “Thinking” differs from inner voice in that thinking can also involve the other animisensi (imaginary sensations). Some persons - deaf persons are discussed below – think primarily using visual imagination.
Inner voice and imaginary sound deserve much more attention in psychology and in our everyday understanding of the world than it has. It should be explained, taught and explored in high school, or perhaps even sooner. For normal adults who are not deaf, the waking mind is busy creating silent sound, including language, used for an array of very important human purposes.
Potentially, imaginary sound is a human ability that sets us apart from most of the animal kingdom. Every normal human has a secret life, the one within their mind, silent language used to evaluate themselves and others, plan the future, weigh potential outcomes, manage their emotions, review sound memories such as music, and generally, create a silent system for management and enjoyment of our physical lives.
Science is What Science Talks About
If inner voice and imaginary sound are so important, why haven’t we heard more about them sooner?
I like The Art of Scientific Investigation by William Beveridge as a discussion of the philosophy of science. Science is not knowledge. Science is a process based primarily on observation. There are other tools in the science toolkit including experimentation, hypothesis, intuition, imagination, reason and logic, and opportunism. Sometimes, a science neglects some important tools of science or they place too much weight on one method or another. Social sciences often define themselves by what they study. Often, "what they study" neglects important phenomena that should be part of their field.
Fernyhough (2016, p.18) notes that psychology is dominated by behaviorist theories. Behaviorism is based on the concept that, since science is based on observation, psychology should be based on observable behavior. “Only the measurement of observable behaviors could guarantee a rigorous science of the mind. Introspection seemed consigned to history.” Since the human mind cannot be observed it was somewhat ignored. Inner speech and imaginary sound have been neglected by psychology simply because they are not behavior. Because of behaviorism, psychology has undervalued introspection as a valid scientific tool.
In the psychiatric profession, imaginary sound has long been closely associated with auditory hallucinations. Perhaps, the concept of imaginary sound as a skill or ability has been discounted because of its association with hallucinations. Sheikh (2017) states “Auditory hallucinations are the most common type (of hallucination) experienced. Some patients report hearing voices; others hear phantom melodies.” Auditory hallucinations (paracusia) cannot be controlled. Some people are forced to listen to music in their minds (musical ear syndrome), unable to stop it. These sounds are unwanted, involuntary animisoni. They are observable in the sense that people can report them, and they are a problem for that person, and often, those around them.
Consider Sir Issac Newton and the story of his “discovery” of gravity. As the story goes, he realized there must be a force at work when he saw an apple fall. However, people certainly appreciated and accommodated gravity long before the apple fell. Every toddler learns to walk while taking gravity into account. Falls hurt, and untethered objects roll or slide downhill. Gravity has always been there. It is part of the background. So, Sir Newton did not discover gravity. He simply realized that there should be a unique concept for it. Armed with a concept, science proceeded to observe, theorize and quantify, and this work has been the basis of countless scientific and technological innovations.
Microscopic life was discovered in the late 1600’s. Before then, there was no word for it. Science did not talk about microscopic life because it was not known to exist. Science was largely unaware of the importance of microscopic life to humans until about 200 years ago. Now, millions of scientists and other people talk about the microscopic world every day, and there are thousands of new words related to microscopic life and its activities. We have an appreciation of its profound impact on everything around us, and we have learned to manage the microscopic world to provide a vast improvement in our daily lives.
To some extent, science is what science talks about. Imaginary sound has been part of the human experience for millennia. Inner voice has been recognized at least since people started writing about it in ancient Greece. Plato expounded on the idea of an internal dialogue or a “dialogue of the soul.” It’s just that, until recently, no one had the foresight to approach inner voice using scientific methods. Charles Fernyhough did not discover inner voice, and I did not discover imaginary sound. Rather, we expand and combine existing concepts and applied science to better understand and explain the human experience. We create new words and phrases for the brain to memorize and understand.
In the past, psychology may have neglected thought because it is not observable. With new imaging techniques, this is no longer entirely true, and the evidence points to sound as the basis for thought. “Neuroscientists are showing how mental voices draw on some of the same neural systems that underlie external speech” (Fernyhough 2016 p. 9). One MRI study suggests that 90 percent of people lying down for a few minutes experienced some internal language (p. 31).
An Appeal to Introspection Using Reading
One way to validate the presence and importance of imaginary sound is by appeal to introspection. The exploration of thought lends itself to introspection because one’s imaginary sounds cannot be observed by another.
If you are like most people with normal hearing, I believe that the written words on this page cause your mind to create imaginary sound of spoken language. For most persons, and there are exceptions, reading is the imaginary sound of spoken language created by reference to visual symbols such as writing.
The experience of sound is characterized by pitch, duration, timbre and intensity. If reading is imaginary sound, it should also have these characteristics. As you are reading, try to change the pitch of your imaginary sound to be high, even squeaky, or low, like Morgan Freeman or Darth Vadar, perhaps. You can change the duration of your imaginary reading sound by changing pace, reading faster or slower. A slower reading speed (slow way down now) can result in the imaginary sound being stretched out much more than necessary for understanding. Do you hear the imaginary hiss of your slow S’s? The term “timbre” is used to capture a variety of other sound characteristics and is affected by frequency spectrum, sound pressure and the temporal characteristics of the sound. As an example in reading, perhaps you enjoy reading or thinking with an accent other than your own. People with different backgrounds use pitch, tone and timbre differently, and those can be applied to imaginary spoken language as well. Perhaps you enjoy reading with an accent other than your own.
Fernyhough notes that studies have found that people read faster than they can speak. There are probably two reasons for this. One, the abilities of deaf people show that written words can reference their meaning without use of an intermediate sound (Fernyhough, 2014). Also, perhaps we can imagine the sound of consecutive words faster than we can vocalize them. Speech requires complex sequential movements of the larynx, tongue and lips that are not required for imaginary sound. Furthermore, a complete, silent enunciation of words is often not required to trigger its meaning. We can read without complete silent pronunciation.
Fernyhough’s studies suggest a close relationship between imaginary sound and reading. Imaginary sound may have evolved with development of increasingly complex written symbols which are associated with sound. Fernyhough’s work also suggests that young children do not experience inner voice and that childhood spoken reading develops into silent reading. Most people are born with brains that are able to produce imaginary sound. Speaking, self-talk and reading slowly applies and nurtures that ability into a skill.
Differentiating thought, inner voice and imaginary sound
The portrayal of thinking as inner speech goes back to Plato (Alderson-Day and Fernyhough, 2015). Certainly, the concept of inner speech is well-founded in modern literature. In a recent national best-seller, a philosophical explanation of self, in the first sentence of Chapter 1 titled “The Voice Inside Your Head”, the author states “you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops” (Singer 2007). Later “It’s actually a shocking realization when you first notice that your mind is constantly talking.”
In Singer’s view, people are often unaware of their inner voice, the inner voice can cause problems, and the path to consciousness, lucidity and betterment is the management of inner voice. “The mind talks all the time because you gave it a job to do. You use it as a protection mechanism...” “To be aware that you are watching the voice talk is to stand on the threshold of a fantastic inner journey. If used properly, the same mental voice that has been a source of worry, distraction and general neurosis can become the launching ground for true spiritual awakening.”
Fernyhough references other authors who have similar findings. “For many of us the running commentary never stops” wrote one philosopher (Fernyhough 2016 p 31). For another “inner speech is one of the basic facts of human nature.”
Fernyhough (2016) provides a more informed, professional and scientific summary of “inner voice.” His book documents the scope and importance of inner voice for normal people, as relates to reading, and as relates to daily life and mental health. He asks “What kind of activity is thinking?” He uses personal introspection, science and history, but primarily, observation and analysis of what people report about their thinking. He discusses inner speech or “inner voice,” “voice-hearers,” auditory hallucinations, and silent reading, and finds that we should recognize a more important role for our internal language.
Fernyhough uses the term “inner speech” as a reference point for “thinking”. However, some inner speech might not be “thinking”; for example, if the inner speech is being used to recite text from memory, or to pray. These activities are not commonly included within the scope of “thinking.” A better definition of thinking might limit the scope of uses of imaginary sound of language to a set of purposes including reasoning, contemplation, understanding or planning.
Inner speech is one type of use of silent language. Wilkinson and Fernyhough state that “Inner speech involves making a speech act, involves speaking your mind directly. . . “ However, there are many other uses of imaginary language that are not “speaking your mind directly.” Imaginary language may be reading, or lines from a play, or lyrics from a song, or memories of written language, or mimicry of other’s speech.
I have asked many people to explain what they experience when they are thinking. Most people have a hard time with this question, probably because no one has ever explained or asked this before. I then ask, “What language do you think in?” People readily understand this cue and respond that they “think” in their native language. This then helps them understand that their thought is language. Language seems to be a prerequisite for thought, and thought is conducted in the language or languages that one has learned. No one reads in a language they do not understand unless they are trying to learn it. I read in English, and I think in English. People think in their own language, or if they are bilingual, they may think in multiple languages. Fernyhough notes that when a bilingual person travels and changes the language they are speaking, they may also change the language they use for thinking.
But then, how is the language experienced? What is this “inner voice” from our own perspective? What is it made of? Is “voice” not sound?
Fernyhough (2010) addresses the relationship between thought and imaginary language.
"My narrower definition of "thinking" goes like this. Thinking is conscious and it is active. . . And it is linguistic: verbal for those of us who use spoken language, visual for those of us who use sign language to communicate with others and with ourselves. . . I have said that thinking is inner speech. That's a strong claim, and it requires another step to the argument. . . there are (at least) two kinds of inner speech, what I have called condensed and expanded. . . In a nutshell, the language that is to be internalized becomes abbreviated, so that inner speech becomes a "note-form" version of the external dialogue from which it derives. . . In its condensed form, the language that forms inner speech has all of its acoustic properties stripped away, losing the qualities of tone, accent, timbre and pitch that distinguish spoken language. . . It is this category of abbreviated inner speech that I have called condensed inner speech. In this kind of thinking, we are still using language, but it may not subjectively seem like spoken language (because the acoustic properties of language have been stripped away)."
I differ from Fernyhough in that I don’t believe that the mind can think in language that has its “acoustic properties stripped away.” If our inner voice has been stripped of its acoustic properties, what is left to imagine?
I think that “condensed inner speech” is simply imaginary sound of language that is not clearly imagined or recalled. We must speak clearly to be understood by others, and it’s embarrassing to mumble, but such clarity is not required when speaking to one’s self. Short form may be sufficient for the task at hand, but it is still imaginary sound. Also, a thinker may not need to complete the imaginary sound of a word or phrase in order to completely understand its meaning. Perhaps, imaginary language is not as memorable as the sound of language. People often speak out loud to themselves, as in reading a phone number to call, in order to make the numbers memorable. Often, we experience imaginary language and are shortly unable to recall it. It may be that imaginary language is not clearly recalled unless recall is planned.
The “inner voice” has acoustic properties because the brain can remember and process sound. We think using the tools that our brain has. Yong (2022), by comparison of sensory experience among species, provides a frame of reference to understand how our senses are limited. We cannot imagine the sensation of magnetic fields. We cannot imagine colors that represent light wavelengths that we cannot perceive. We cannot perceive some durational aspects of bird songs that are important for the bird. Deaf people may think using visual images and this is possible because their brain can imagine visual images. For most of us, thoughts may include imaginary visual images because the brain is able to produce them.
The point is that thinking is not an activity that is independent of our senses. The human brain can imagine only in terms of senses that we have. We can imagine sound, sights, smells, motion or feelings such as pain because those are the senses that our brains can process. The scope of our senses and our brains together define the limits of our imagination. Thinking may involve images associated with any of our senses, but for most of us, deaf persons being the most obvious exception, thought is primarily imaginary sound of language.
Adult humans use imaginary sound and working memory to create new, original, and silent language. Most people experience these memories of language as imaginary sound. The working memory includes an enormous catalog of spoken words, each word a memory of sound combinations, that we can combine further into complex arrangements that are the imaginary sound stream we call thinking. The human mind understands how imaginary words can be strung together to create complicated meanings in silent thought, or in noisy speech. In this view, thought and the vocalization of that thought are identical except that thought is silent and is not intended to be heard by another.
Self-talk is another term used to describe imaginary language. Latinjak et al.(2019) introduce some simple concepts to clarify relationships between self-talk and thinking. Self-talk takes form in verbalizations and “in self-talk, the sender of the message is also the receiver. Therefore, self-talk can be defined as verbalizations addressed to the self. This definition turns self-talk into. . . a basic unit of thinking, distinguished from other units such as thoughts, which are not necessarily verbalizations, or verbalizations, which are not necessarily addressed to the self. . . self-talk can be articulated either out loud or as a small voice inside the head.”
The realization of the central role of imaginary sound of language can enable a better definition of thinking and thought. As a matter of semantics, “thought” is most commonly used to refer to specific purposes of imaginary language such as contemplation, understanding, planning and foresight.
Most people think using imaginary sound, but some do not. Fernyhough and others have documented that deaf people think using visual imagination. The mind of the deaf must adapt to a world without sound. Deaf people may think using visual images of written symbols and sign language, and some evidence suggests that the deaf use the same neural pathways for this visual imagery as normal people use for their imaginary speech. Experts will attest that deafness is a severe disability, perhaps more so than blindness, because deaf people must learn to think and communicate without sound. The deaf learn to create imaginary visual images and they combine them in ways to make thoughts that can function as well as the imaginary sound of speech.
Also, an accurate definition of “thought” should include certain imaginations that are not sound. One expert states “thoughts can be idea-like, memory-like, picture-like, or song-like” (Morsella 2012). Even for normal hearers, thought can be more than just imaginary sound.
A “thought” can include imaginary sight, smells and other sensations. A definition of “thinking” should include imaginations based on senses other than sound. Generally, however, for normal hearing awake persons, the imaginary sound ability is used more than their other imaginary abilities. This is probably due to the co-evolution of our brains and social experience that allows and teaches humans to handle the complex sounds of spoken language. Humans and our non-human ancestors used sound to communicate meaning ages before writing.
So, how might all of this play into a better definition of thought?
Thought: Intentional imaginary sound of language, enabled by working memory of language, and augmented by other
imaginary sensations, for purposes of planning, foresight, contemplation and understanding.
Different lines of inquiry document different uses of imaginary sound. In general, there is imaginary spoken language versus other imaginary sound. Imaginary language is used to think and to read, but also to count, to practice spoken language and to provide self-feedback regarding performance, experience and emotions, and for silent communication with the spirit world. Other imaginary sounds includes any non-language sound used for any purpose such as music, bird calls, or other identifying sounds.
Inner speech is one type of use of silent language. Wilkinson and Fernyhough state that “Inner speech involves making a speech act, involves speaking your mind directly. . . “ However, there are many other uses of imaginary language that are not “speaking your mind directly.” Imaginary language may be reading, or lines from a play, or lyrics from a song, or memories of written language, or mimicry of other’s speech.
It seems likely that people have an enormous range of experiences with their imaginary sound. Some self-talk is likely optimistic, other times pessimistic, sometimes counting, motivating, evaluating, creating music, fantasizing, praying, or deliberating. It would be interesting to study how one’s background and culture affect their use of imaginary sound. The IVPs use a method called Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to obtain and compile people’s stated experiences regarding what they are thinking at random moments. Differences among cultures and backgrounds could be a good area of study for DES.
Reading and thought are perhaps the most important uses of the imaginary sound ability, but there are others.
Counting and Math
Imaginary sound and the language of numbers are used to count and perform math. When necessary, a well-trained adult can start at zero and silently count objects to get a reliable, correct number. With knowledge of math, we can apply concepts and imaginary numbers to obtain a correct result. Perhaps this activity is just a kind of thinking, but it certainly is very specific and practical. The use of inner voice for scheduling is a similar activity. We are able to imagine time constructs such as time-of-day or a calendar in silent verbal terms and work out scheduling problems without necessarily resorting to paper.
Practicing speech
Imaginary speech can be used to practice for spoken performance. A person may read and memorize their lines for a play or an address, or they may practice to help memorize lyrics of a song. When alone, they may practice out loud, providing the best possible test of their delivery. But this may not be practical, say, when riding the bus. They may read the lines or lyrics silently, then, to test their memory, try to recite them silently without reference to the written language.
Motivation
The use of self-talk by athletes to improve performance is another thread of research involving imaginary sound. Imaginary sound can be important for athletes and others who use positive inner speech for motivation or for following a strategy. Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015) provide documentation for the use and success of motivational inner speech. More recently, Latinjak et al (2019) provide a distinction between “organic self-talk” which is “inherent thoughts and self-statements athletes address to themselves” and “strategic self-talk” which is “a deliberately employed strategy. . . involving the use of cue words or phrases to enhance performance or achieve other related outcomes.” The authors discuss the many forms and functions of inner speech practiced by athletes. The authors would also “distinguish spontaneous from goal-directed self-talk. . . Spontaneous self-talk is formulated without intentin and could be considered a window into psychological states such as emotions, performance beliefs or attributions.”
Motivation is one use of imaginary sound that is certainly not unique to athletes. Motivational inner speech is used at work and in social situations to overcome fears of rejection, failure and other adverse outcomes.
Praying
Silent or internalized prayer is a common use of our imaginary sound ability. There has not been much use of scientific method applied to prayer. It is an experience that occurs across religions. There are many forms of prayer including benedictions (blessings), naming of the title of a deity or deities, petitions and responses, ceremonial and ritualistic prayers, free prayers (no fixed form), repetition or formula prayers, vows, hymns, and statements of gratitude, praise or glory. Prayers may be addressed to deities, to ancestors, or to other spirits. Some of the earliest writings such as the Egyptian Pyramid Texts and the Book of the Dead are compilations of prayers.
There are sometimes general rules for when prayer should be spoken or imagined. Hindu mysticism, for example, gives great importance to spoken prayer. Van Der Horst (1994) states that
“In antiquity prayers were said out loud and silent prayer was regarded as an anomalous practice that was looked upon with great suspicion. . . It is only in circles of later (esp. Neo- Platonism). . . that complete silence as the purest form of worship was gradually accepted. . . in Jewish and Christian documents there was also another motive that facilitated a gradual acceptance of silent prayer as a respectable form of worship, namely, the biblical story (in 1 Samuel 1) about Hanna's inaudible prayer that was heard by God.”
Some religions encourage spoken prayer in group settings but allow silent prayer when alone. Certainly there are situations with other persons present in which spoken prayer is not advised. Also, people might claim to be praying silently when they are thinking about something else.
Audiation and Mimicry
Imaginary speech is just one use of our imaginary sound ability, and the brain’s ability to create and control imaginary sound is an important tool for other activities. Audiation is defined as “comprehension and internal realization of music, or the sensation of an individual hearing or feeling sound when it is not physically present.” The term was coined by Edwin Gordon about 1975, though there were different terms used before that. Another definition of audiation is “the experience of hearing and comprehending music with the mind’s ear” (Biber, 2017)
Experiments have been conducted to substantiate different stages of "audiation. Kindergartners were tested for asked to perform tonal and rhythm patterns in a specified manner several times a day for three days. Results suggested that there are stages of audiation and that age, culture and musical achievement affect how humans audiate (Gordon, 1985).
We can recall sound memories as references to objects. A birder, for example, can recall a species’ unique call and perhaps use that memory to mimic the call.
Use a moment of introspection to apply your imaginary sound to a favorite song. I believe this type of audiation is common among people who enjoy music. This exercise should help to convince the reader that imaginary sound can have pitch, duration, timbre and intensity.
It's Not All Good
Imaginary sound is a tool we use to read, think, practice, pray and have fun. But our ability comes with downsides. Musical ear syndrome and paracusia (auditory hallucinations) have been mentioned.
There is a gray area of unwanted sound. Unwanted thoughts may cause stress. They can be controlled to some extent but perhaps they keep coming back. Unwanted thoughts while awake create several types of problems for the thinker. During the day, they can be a distraction from desired mental activity. At night, they can keep the thinker awake. Insomnia can be caused by unpleasant thoughts, and people may damage themselves or others if they don’t get enough sleep. Insomnia caused by bedtime thinking is a problem for millions. “Racing thoughts that make it so you can't sleep can be caused by stress, anxiety, mental illness, medications, or excessive caffeine consumption. Such thoughts can be hard to control, cause you to feel overwhelmed, and make it difficult or impossible to sleep” (Verywellmind.com 2024).
One source suggests that “negative thoughts about getting to sleep, quality of sleep, and consequences of poor sleep can actually increase the chances of having poor sleep. It is as though these negative thoughts become a self-fulfilling prophecy” (CCI, 2024).
Another adverse consequence of our ability is the potential for certain lines of thinking to persist and to result in adverse consequences for the thinker and others. Inner voice enables silent, unobservable planning. There is no assurance that the plan will have good results for anyone.
Potential for an applied science of imaginary sound
What potential is there for these concepts to help people? Explicit recognition of the imaginary sound ability and variable skill levels could provide an improved basis for learning techniques in thinking, reading and music, better control of emotions and mood, and better control of thinking while trying to sleep. Also, some disabilities could be related to problems with the imaginary sound ability.
An explicit recognition of imaginary sound has potential to help people in profound ways. The study of inner voice is growing but without complete recognition of its basis in imaginary sound. More recently, the study of inner voice has found that a small but important fraction of people, perhaps five to ten percent, do not experience inner voice. Studies have found that these persons have significant problems with verbal working memory tasks (Nerdergaard et al. 2024). Could it be that some people do not have a well-developed imaginary sound ability? Could this deficiency be corrected with practice?
For most people, voluntary imaginary sound can be quite clear. For others, the ability to use imaginary sound is weak or non-existent. There may be a link between dyslexia and a weak imaginary sound ability (Cross, 2015). Dyslexic persons often have impaired hearing. Perhaps it’s harder for them to use imaginary sound of spoken language to remember and process words. There is a link between “a deficit in phonological processing” and dyslexia (Catts, 2005). Clearly, an appreciation of the imaginary sound ability might help those whose ability is impaired.
For most people, inner speech is experienced as imaginary sound. However, the deaf may experience inner speech as visual images of words, letters or hand sign. For normal persons, there may be visual or other sensory memories or creations involved. If we are more aware of these abilities, can they be improved? DES might be used to correlate the frequency of reporting of imaginary language with the amount of reading one has experienced. Reading helps imaginary sound develop into a skill.
Most people want to improve their thinking skills. They want to be better problem solvers. Therefore, they should want to better understand how to use their imaginary language. They want to better control what they think about to be more efficient about it.
There are unwanted thoughts and sounds to banish. They may want to avoid thinking while trying to sleep. Some psychological problems are related to unwelcome thoughts; an inability to rid the mind of negative thinking. Explicit recognition of the nature of thought might help some persons to better control recurring and damaging patterns of thought.
More awareness of the nature of our imaginary sound ability could improve lives because, if people are fully aware of it, they should be better able to control and apply it. People speak a word, phrase or number out loud when they want to remember it because we remember sounds better than we remember imaginary sounds. If we are fully aware of our imaginary sound ability, can we use that achieve better thought recall?
An explicit understanding of the existence and uses of our imaginary sound ability could result in important advances in self-improvement. Fernyhough (2016) documents much practical experience in this area that provides adequate support for this notion. Our inner voice can help to keep us safe by being silent, with reasoning about right and wrong, with practice of spoken language, and motivation. Most generally, imaginary sound is a powerful ability, an asset we use to better ourselves in many ways, and there is potential for awareness of the ability to enhance human performance.
Speculation on the Evolution of Imaginary Sound
Another perspective on inner voice and imaginary sound should include its history. The IVPs have provided excellent analysis of how inner voice develops in children. A child learns speech from others, progresses to a stage of verbal self-talk, and finally internalizes to silent self-talk. For most people, imaginary sound is an ability that, nurtured with practice and improved through life, becomes a skill. Children first learn to speak to others, they then talk out loud to themselves, and then, they talk to themselves silently. Later, their imaginary sound ability is increased and expanded by reading, by social interaction, and by other modes of learning.
Another important history of imaginary sound involves its evolution. We can’t hear what happened in the distant past, but we have archeological evidence, and we have evidence from living animals.
Communication among members of a species using sound is very common among species. A large share of the animal kingdom uses an array of sounds to communicate with their group. They may have sounds to notify others of a threat, to call a prospective mate or young, to communicate hunger, pain, or loneliness, or to convey anger, dominance, or other social or survival functions. Biologists have documented that different groups of the same species have different primitive sound languages (Safina, 2020). The languages are passed on from one generation to the next as learned behavior. Some social predators use sound to convey their intentions; for example, the excited yelps of a wolf pack.
Our ancestors had communication abilities using vocalizations long before they had organized language. Our use of language came about first through sound. The duration of our vocal language experience suggests why most people experience imaginary language as sound. Our use of sound to communicate with other humans probably pre-dates our humanity. Our brains evolved, literally over millions of years, to store and use memories of sounds. Our brains have evolved for ages to recall sounds and to associate sound with meaning. That ability in a young human is realized through social interactions with parents and other humans. We think and read in imaginary sound because our brains evolved to have an ability to learn and store the meanings of different sounds. Our memory, hearing, vision and sensory processing evolved together to help us listen, remember, understand and communicate.
Cave art of prehistoric animals is a testament to our ability to attach abstract symbols (the art) to real meanings (the type of animal). Early art suggests that pictures were associated with vocalizations associated with different types of animals and activities such as hunting and gathering. It seems likely that cave art was used to teach or reference spoken words. Written language has a very short history relative to sound communication. Here again, written symbols reference sounds that have meaning.
Our history suggests that the use of visual pictures and symbols associated with sounds came much later than spoken language. Even recently, some human groups had spoken but not written language.
Perhaps the evolution of the imaginary sound ability increased with our ability to create and read pictures and symbols. An imaginary sound ability is needed to translate a picture or symbols to the more ancient sound and its meaning. There would be an evolutionary advantage to the simultaneous use of pictures and spoken language to teach their young about, for example, dangerous or valuable animals. The evolutionary advantage of an ability to associate sound with objects or events in a group setting should be clear.
Then, written language developed, where more detailed symbols are associated with the words assigned to objects and activities. For most of us, when we read, we translate symbols into imaginary sound, and it is the sound that has meaning. The sounds have meaning because our brain is wired that way and has been for ages.
The ability to associate vocalizations with objects and activities requires memory. Users must have memories of which sounds are associated with what. People can think because of the capacity of the brain to create and draw on working memories of spoken language, a catalogue of sounds associated with objects and actions.
For man, the ability to recall, reproduce, write and imagine sounds associated with complex symbols is a great evolutionary advantage. All animals pass on their experience to their young. Humans took it to another level. All over the world we find evidence of food gathering techniques and tools which have been recorded in writing, passed onto young persons, and improved with experience. Writing gave us the ability to communicate sound using visual symbols that could be shared across time and space. Imaginary sound gave us the ability to learn in silence, undetected. Armed with writing and imaginary sound, we learned to apply imaginary language to develop new plans, concepts and interpretations. We became writers, readers and thinkers.
References
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Acknowledgments: My sincere thanks to, and appreciation of Charles Fernyhough for providing a professional perspective and analysis of the experience of thinking.