I have noticed many times, when riding the bus or just walking around, that there are a lot of people who appear to externalize their thought process into a verbal stream of consciousness. I have never had much luck trying to figure out why or how it works, I suppose usually because I get creeped out by those people pretty easily. Is it normal for people to externalize their thoughts like that, constantly? I certainly don't meet many people who do so in the college setting, so it's outside of what I would consider normal.
Hmm, anyways. Sort of a depressing thought, but it sorta fits my mood as I've been sick and not feeling much better yet.
8 comments:
Sorry to hear you're feeling sick.
I have been known to externalize my thoughts, but only in the privacy of my own home. (Listening to my iPod on the bus has the advantage that I don't have to hear these running conversations. I can see how some of them can be creepy.)
As for speaking (and writing) in stream-of-consciousness, I've definitely been known to do that. :)
Given either privacy or a lack of feeling self-conscious, I'll do that quite a bit.
Now, your brain treats data differently based on where it came from -- more specifically, it has different parts deal with input from different sources, more or less.
By verbalizing a thought, you pass that same information over a much larger set of eyes, so to speak -- the part of your brain responsible for talking gets to consider it, as well as (and perhaps more importantly) the part of your brain responsible for listening.
You know how sometimes something doesn't sound stupid until you say it out loud? Okay, maybe that's just me -- I do that a lot. *ahem*
Ah, I think I should have made a distinction in the original post: the creepy part is when it appears to be always on. I've definitely seen people use it as a tool, like Lem suggests, but not really a case where it's the standard mode of thought.
I haven't really noticed that (outside of a crazy Berkeley-guy), or maybe I just assumed that the person was on a cell phone. I've been having the opposite problem. My monologue is so completely internal that I forget that I'm supposed to be talking to the baby so that he can get used to the rhythms of English. Speech is SO slow compared to thought that I'm surprise anyone would verbalize their thoughts except as a tool. Definitely creepy.
I'm sorry to hear you're sick, also! I hope you feel better soon...
I've noticed people doing that stream-of-consciousness thing occasionally (I usually spend a little time trying to figure out if they are talking on a cell phone first) but I just figured it's one of the weird but harmless things that some people do.
Actually, the cell phone point is a very good one. Back in the day, I used to conclude that the person was a weirdo. Now, I'm more likely to think they're just using a cell phone.
I don't do it all the time, but I tend to talk to myself accidentally in public. It's sometimes embarassing at work. One thing that I started doing in high school is fingerspelling my thoughts instead of speaking them; I can do that in a crowded area without getting too many odd looks, and it often helps me get complicated things dealt with.
Interesting, from the responses so far it seems like a pretty often used tool for some thought. I think I tend more towards what Jenny was describing with the internal monologue. I do sometimes externalize thought via visual methods (sorta) - writing, sketches, and equations sometimes help me focus very well on scientific subjects I'm mostly thinking about abstractly.
My experience with people who seem to be always talking in public places is definitely not cell phone use. The mode of conversation is very different, though I can't place exactly why - I think it's that you don't really talk about your thoughts/stream of consciousness on the phone much, and so the whole tone is pretty distinct.
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